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Pmr mmmmmm. ^@mi@©I!s« 



President of Hiram College. 



B. SAVAGE, P?!INTER, CLEVELAND. 



Our Common Schools: 



A FULLER STATEMENT 



VIEWS SET FORTH IN THE PAMPHLET 



ENTITLED, 



"OUR COMMON-SCHOOL EDUCATION, 



U 



WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE 



REPLY OF SUPERINTENDENT A, J, RICKOFF. 



BY 

B. A. HINSDALE, A. M., 

PRESIDENT OF HIRAM COLLEGE. 



li is Washing- Dav just now in the American Edtuatimial Kitchen.'" 

—Bev. A. D. MAYO. 



CLEVELAND, 0: 

COBB, ANDKEWS, & CO. 

1878. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



PART FIRST. 

RELATIVE MERITS OF THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLS. 

I. — History op the Common School. 
II. — The Old and the New Schools op New England 
III. — More Testimony from Dr. Peabody" and 

Mr. Gr. B. Emerson. 
IV. — The "West Point Statistics. 



PART SECOND. 

SOME FORMER CRITICISMS OF THE NEW SCHOOLS. 

I. — The Real Issue. 
II. — Rigidity and Formalism. 
III. — Multiplicity of Studies and Superficiality 

OF Pupils. 
IV. — Women Teachers. 
V. — Emphasis Given to Material Apparatus. 



PART THIRD. 

SOME NEW CRITICISMS OF THE NEW SCHOOLS. 

I. — The High School. 
II. — Boards op Education. 
III. — The School-Book Abuse. 
IV. — Cost op Public Schools. 
V. — Country Schools. 
VI. — Spirit op Our Public Education. 
VII. — Conclusion. 



APPENDIX : Prop. Church on the West Point Statistics. 



Lot^is R. Klemm 
Bequest 



DEDICATION. 



To the Members of the Xorth-Eastern Ohio Teachers Association: 

I take the liberty to dedicate to j-ou this contribution to a discussion in 
which you have all shown much interest. In so doing, I bear testimony 
to the uniform attention and respect with which you have listened to 
such views of education and schools as I have presented in the meetings 
from time to time, however erroneous j'ou may have thought them; also 
to the uniform courtesy with which you have treated the only " college- 
man " who, the last five 3-ears, has been a frequent attendant on the 
Association. In submitting this paper I den}- having made an " attack" 
on ilie Common Schools either before or now, and disclaim all hostility 
to them. My own education began in a Common School, for several 
terms I taught a Common Sohool, and I am still in close sympathj- with 
the Common-School work. Many of mj' closest friends are Common- 
School teachers, and, I may add, of your own Association. 

Respectfully, 

B. A. HiKSDALE. 

Hiram, September 23, 1878. 



INTRODUCTION. 



At the meeting of the North-Eastern Ohio Teachers' Association held in 
Cleveland, December 9, 1876, by the request of the Executive Committee, 
I read a paper entitled, "Our Common-School Education." The Associa- 
tion immediately voted to publish the paper at its expense, and to make it 
the subject of discussion at the next meeting. Before the February meeting 
took place the paper had been printed and copies put in the hands of 
members. Instead of going on with the discussion, however, the Associ- 
ation directed its Executive Committee to choose some one to prepare a 
reply, and voted that the discussion should be on the two papers. It was 
also voted that the reply, when prepared, should be published. Mr. A. J. 
Rickoff, Superintendent of the Cleveland Schools, having been chosen to 
prepare the t'eply, read a lengthy paper at the April meeting, on the 
conclusion of which the discussion was again deferred two months. Tlie 
Superintendent's paper not appearing earlier, owing to his inability to 
prepare it for the press, the discussion was adjourned from time to time 
until Februarj' 9, 1878. An entire session was then devoted to the sub- 
ject, when it was dismissed. First and last, it had been before the Asso- 
ciation, and in a sense before the public, fourteen months. It is admitted 
that my former paper made a considerable impression on the public mind. 
It is believed by niany — scholars, teachers, private citizens, editors, men 
high in public station— that the views there set forth are, in the main, cor- 
rect. It is thought by a large majority of those who have read i\Ir. Rickoflf's 
"ReplJ^" with whom I have conversed, that it is remarkable chiefly for 
missing the real points at issue. Accordingly, having been strongly 
urged thereto by many who think the discussion should not rest where 
the Association left it, I have prepared this second paper, partly to ex- 
amine topics that have been already raised, partly to discuss som'^ new 
ones. But before entering on the discussion proper, I must make a 
further preliminary remai'k. 

Some of Mr. Rickoff's remarks, naturally construed (see the beginning 
and close of his "Preface," especially), put me in a false position. It is 
due to myself to say there is nothing in the whole history of the discus- 
sion that shows me to be the antagonist or even a self-constituted censor 
of the Common Schools. It was only after repeated solicitations that my 
former paper was produced. It is also due to Mr. Rickoff to say that, 
when his attention was drawn to this matter, he disclaimed, both publicly 
and privately, liaving intended to say aught that was offensive. 



PART FIRST. 



RELATIVE MERITS OF THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLS. 

The first 17 pages of -'Our Common-School Education'' em- 
braced a variety of topics that may be thus summarized: 

(1) The origin and history of the Common School, especially 
in our own country; (2) The recent rapid growtli and present 
great proportions of the Common-School system in the United 
States; (3) A comparison of our former and present elemen- 
tary education with respect to thoroughness and value. Under 
this head it was asked whether we do, as is constantly assumed, 
read and spell, calculate and reason, better than our fathers and 
mothers who lived before the "improvements" in education — 
whether we are better disciplined and make more out of life; 
and some evidence was presented going to show that j^ossihly 
the common oj^inion on these points is mistaken, and certainly 
greatly exaggerated. To everything said on these points Mr. 
Eickoff enters a denial, and devotes 70 of his 87 pages to a 
general refutation. Nor does he content himself with a denial 
and a refutation. He encloses a much larger ground, as this 
quotation shows (p. -4): 

" It does not seem best to confine myself to a mere answer to Mr. Hinsdale. 
The evidence of a few competent witnesses and a thorough refutation of his 
West Point argument would be sufficient to meet every material point in his 
address. But I shall avail myself of the opportunity to direct public attention 
to such facts in the history of the Common Schools as may be of service in 
iheir present and future management." 

Before inquiring how successful the Superintendent has been 
in cultivating this wide field, I must offer two general remarks: 

First, his method of conducting the discussion is such as to 
make it difficult to come to close quarters with him. Mr. 
Eickoff does not seem to have been trained in that school of 



6 OUE COMMON SCHOOLS. 

logic whose professors say to their pupils: "Admit all you can 
of your antagonist's position, narrow the field of controversy^ 
and join issue on the essential jjoints;" but rather in the school 
where the instruction is: "Admit nothing, deny everything^ 
and widen the field to the very horizon." 

But, second, he partially misses the point of the inquiry. In 
the narrowest sense, a Common School may, perhaps, be called 
a school that is created and supported by the State, and there- 
fore is freely open to all children within the prescribed ages. 
But if so, that is not the sense of the expression in this 
inquiry. In that sense the District Schools of Ohio, 25 and 
30 years ago, were not Common Schools, for they were sus- 
tained in part by rate-bills. The comparison lies between the 
common education of former periods and the common education 
of to-day; and, therefore, betAveen the schools in which that 
education has been given in the different periods, whether sup- 
ported by the State wholly, partially, or not at all. Speaking 
from an Ohio standpoint, I should say the comparison is between 
the District Schools and the few C-radod Schools of 20 or 30 
years ago, supplemented by the Academies of that time, and the 
State school system as it now exists. I do not say that Mr. 
Eickoff has wholly confined the discussion to the narrow sense 
of the term Common School; but a careful reader of his pam- 
phlet cannot fail to discover that he thinks the argument turns- 
principally on the relative merits of the free State education of 
different times. His mind seems to be so filled with the gran- 
deur and perfection of the State Craded Schools of to-day that 
he has small conception of a different order of schools, in which 
the American people were educated for two centuries. As a 
consequence, many of his shot miss the target. 

I shall now take up some topics in numbered order. 

I. HISTORY OF THE COMMON SCHOOL. 

My former paper opened with a 2-page history of popular 
education in this country. Mr. Rickoff objects to my history 
as "inaccurate," and then falls to work himself to show how 
that history should be written. In this part of his paper he 
has evinced considerable zeal as an educational antiquary. He 
has produced, from out-of-the-way places, a large amount of 
curious, interesting, and valuable historical material, that must. 



OLD AND NEW SCHOOLS. 7 

undoubtedly, be incorporated in a full account of this matter. 
Of course, my sketch was a rapid generalization, and therefore 
wholly inadequate, if considered as a history; but, with all the 
light that Mr. Kickoff has thrown upon the subject, I fail to see 
that I am an especial offender in point of "rhetoric." 1 said 
of the American people, "We yield to none * * * m our 
devotion to popular elementary instruction." Mr. Rickoff 
denies; but I ask, Avith all solemnity, whether it is not strictly 
true. I quoted President Gilman, who, in his "North Ameri- 
can" paper, said of our system: "Its influence on the promo- 
tion of intelligence and prosperity in the Northern and Eastern 
States has been rated so high that every new State adopts it 
without question." Mr. Rickoff says this is "directly contrary 
to the fact;" but I re-assert the statement. Dr. Gilman does 
not say educational progress in Ohio, and in other States, has 
not been slow, and sometimes obstructed; but that every new 
State now adopts this system without question. The statement 
is true. Mr. Rickoff makes fun at my expense when I say: 
"This Massachusetts tree first overspread New England" — that 
"cuttings from it were thickly planted in the region of the 
Great Lakes," etc.; but I re-assert all these statements, and 
challenge successful denial. There is nothing even in the facts 
produced by Mr. Rickoff that in any way antagonizes with 
President Oilman's statement or my own. 

I quote once more this passage from President Dwight: 

"A stranger, traveling through New England, marks with not a little sur- 
prise the multitude of school-houses appearing everywhere at little distances. 
Familiarized as I am to the sight, they have excited no small interest in my 
mind, particularly as I was traveling through the settlements recently begun. 
Here, while the inhabitants were still living in log huts, they had not only 
erected school-houses for their children, but had built them in a neat style, so 
as to throw an additional appearance of deformity over their own clumsy 
habitations. This attachment to education in New England is universal, and 
the situation of that hamlet must be bad indeed which, if it contain a sufficient 
number of children for a school, does not provide the necessary accommoda- 
tions. In 1803 I found neat school-houses in Colebrook and Stewart, bordering 
on the Canadian line." 

Mr. Rickoff revolts most of all from my statement that our 
school system is a growth or evolution of 200 years. But I re- 
aflBrm that, and should be disappointed if men of intelligence 
and candor could be found who will say nay. Of course, I did 
not mean that it had grown with equal rapidity at all stages, or 



8 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

that at times the growth may not have been arrested, but that 
it was the work of the whole American period. I deny that, 
from my sketch, "one woukl be led to believe that the develop- 
ment of the system had been a magnificent and unobstructed 
progress from the time of the first settlement of New England 
down to the present day." If I should say, "American inde- 
pendence and unity were the work of 150 years," would any 
one understand me- as saying that their growth was uniformly 
continuous? Suppose Mr. Eickoff should put in a denial to 
that statement, saying, " That is rhetoric; American independ- 
ence was won between the years 1775 and 1783," Avould I be 
expected gravely to argue with him? 



II. THE OLD AND NEW SCHOOLS OF NEW ENGLAND. 

Mr. Rickoff has made numerous and lengthy extracts from 
Edward Everett, Dr. Barnard, Gr. B. Emerson, Horace Mann, 
W. B. Fowle, and others, relative to the state of pojiular educa- 
tion in earlier times, more especially in New England. I have 
read them all with great care and interest. Mr. Rickoff has 
relieved me of tho necessity of considering what these writers 
say: he has himself discredited their testimony as follows: 

Page 28 he takes up the spelling question. He makes me say 
that I have "given 20 years to the study of the subject" — 
a thing that I never said, and that would be grossly untrue if I 
had said it. He says that he lias found some testimony for me, 
but that it is not evidence. This sentence describes the testi- 
mony that is not evidence: 

"We can find plenty of men of scholarship and learning who will tell us 
that they thivk that spelling in the schools has deteriorated within the present 
generation; but twenty years ago the Rev. Heman Humphrey said the same 
thing, and somewhere about twenty years before that Horace Mann, William 
B. Fowle, and others expressed opinions to like efifect, as to the degeneracy of 
the schools in this important branch of learning." 

These are the very men that he quotes from so liberally to 
show the deterioration of New England education at the close 
of the last century and the beginning of this one. Now, if we 
cannot trust Horace Mann, Rev. Heman Humphrey, and William 
B. Fowle, when they say spelling has "degenerated," how can 
we trust them wlien they say education has degenerated as a 



OLD AND NEW SCHOOLS. 9 

Avhole? If their "testimony" is not ''evidence" in the one 
case, why is it in the oilier? It is amusing with what entire 
unconsciousness of danger Mr. Eickoff here cuts off, with one 
stroke of his saw, the very limb astride of which he sits for 50 
pages, dolorously singing the former desolation of education! 

But waiving this point, I do not doul)t that these extracts, 
considered with reference to the purpose of their authors, are 
generally correct. But they are as much rhetoric as my 
2-page history. These writers, to a man, were ardently inter- 
ested in education; most of them were teachers; all of them 
had exalted ideas of schools; and, seeing the educational apathy 
around them, and bent on arousing men to activity, they spoke 
and wrote as they did. What they said is rhetorically true; but 
to suppose that these extracts, either severally or collectively, 
give a full idea of American common education in the times 
referred to, would be like gathering up the epigrams of Wendell 
Phillips and the utterances of C. F. Adams, Jr., and calling the 
whole a picture of our Common Schools to-day. It has been 
often remarked that, when a minister wants an unusually large 
missionary collection, he prefaces the appeal with a sermon 
giving a discouraging account of religion — all the more discour- 
aging if his live]' be disordered, or he is not very firmly planted 
in his own field of labor. There are two ways of exciting men 
to activity — one is to appeal to their hopes, the other to their 
fears. Men are aroused to action by discouragement as well as 
by encouragement — a fact that the advocates of popular educa- 
tion understand as well as others. 

Mr. Eickoff not only denies that our education is an evolu- 
tion of 200 years, Init he says "the present system, in all its 
essential features, is hardly 50 years old." In other places he 
seems to think pretty much all we have to speak of has been 
accomplished in half of that time. "In 1856," he says, "the 
New England schools had begun to feel something of that 
impulse which Horace Mann had sought to give the schools of 
Massachusetts." From this time on the New England schools 
have thrived wonderfully, it seems, as in some respects they no 
doubt have. But when I reached this page, I took down from 
the shelf two or three of those bulky but valuable volumes 
known as the "Eeports of the United States Census," and an 
hour's turning of leaves and fio;urino- revealed these facts: 



10 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

In 1850 New England had a native popnlation of 2,417,050. 
Of these, 8,054 persons, 20 years old and upward, could not read 
and write — not a very bad showing, certainly, for a land that 
had been so poorly ofl: in the way of schools! 

In 1870 the native population was 2,839,923. How many of 
these, 20 years old and upward, could not read and write cannot 
be directly determined; but it can be shown that illiteracy has 
considerably increased among them. For example, the natives 
unable to write, 10 years of age and upwards, is 31,914. Sup- 
posing that this number falls off in the same ratio, from 10 to 
21, as the total number unable to write, native and foreign — a 
perfectly fair supposition — then the number of natives, 21 and 
upwards, unable to write is 31,126. What is more, the ''unable 
to write" in 1870 corresponds with the "cannot read and 
write" of 1850 (since the "cannot write" is the larger number, 
and always includes the "cannot read"); so that we may de- 
scribe the 21,126 in 1870 as those who cannot read and write. 
We have now the materials for this table: 

Native Population of New England in 1850 2,417,050 

Native Population of New England in 1870 2,839,923 

Rate per cent, of Increase in 20 years 17)^ 

Native Population of New England in 1850, 20 and upwards, unable 

to read and write 8,054 

Native Population of New England in 1871, 21 and upwards, unable 

to read and write 21,126 

Rate per cent, of Increase in 20 years 162X 

That is, native illiteracy increased 10 times as rapidly as the 
native population. In the same period the cost of the public 
schools, in the same States, increased 288 per cent. So it will 
be seen that cost kept ahead of increasing illiteracy. And all 
the while New England education is rapidly improving! 

Let me submit to some graded-school pupil, proficient in the 
rule-of-three, this "sum:" If the native population increases 
for 20 years at the rate of 17^ per cent., and the native illiteracy 
at the rate of 162^ per cent., how long will it be, provided the 
education improves all the time, before ;ill the people of New 
England will be illiterate? 

The Compendium of the Census of Massachusetts for 1875 
contains the statistics of illiteracy in the State for that year. 
These figures are gathered from that volume (pp. 91-4): 



OLD AND NEW SCHOOLS. 11 

Illiterates above 10 years 104,51<> 

" above 21 90,789 

Native-born Illiterates 12,150 

Foreign-born " 92,363 

Native-born " above 21 6,947 

Illiterates born in Massachusetts 7,646 

" " " " of Illiterate Foreign Parents 3,275 

And yet Massachusetts expended in that 3^ear $6,201,014.63 
on her public schools, or a little more than $20 for each pupil 
enrolled! It is not surprising that these statistics should some- 
what alarm Massachusetts educators, as they do. 

It is easy to say, by way of accounting for the increasing 
illiteracy of New England, that her foreign population is in- 
creasing; that her manufacturing towns are rapidly growing; 
that increasing numbers of children work in the factories; that 
population is becoming more dense and less homogeneous: all 
these propositions are quite true, and go a long way toward ex- 
plaining why illiteracy grows apace, and more than apace; but 
the ugly fact remains, that, bad as the educational systems of 
New England were 50 years ago, according to Mr. Rickoff, 
and excellent as are the systems of to-day, according to the same 
authority — small as the expenditures were then and great as 
they are now — feeble as educational activity was then and pow- 
erful as it is now — the present system does not answer the needs 
of to-day as well as the old system answered the needs of a gen- 
eration ago. No one familiar with the facts is likely to afl&rm 
that the New Englander of to-day is superior in discipline and 
mastery of the problems of life to the New Englander of 50 
years ago. These New England statistics certainly show that, 
however it may be with the cpiality of her education, it is less 
pervasive than formerly. Also that Mr. RickofE's picture is 
overdrawn. 

Were we to grant that Mr. Rickoif 's general thesis is true — 
that our common education has improved — it is impossible to 
deny that he has greatly exaggerated the former condition of 
the schools. He has put 10 times as much black paint in his 
picture as I put white paint in mine. Who, then, has been 
guilty of rhetoric — he or I? 

A very common fallacy appears in the Superintendent's paper. 
His method is to reason from the schools deductively — and es- 
pecially from the material apparatus of the schools — to the 



12 OUR COMMON" SCHOOLS. 

quality of the poinilar education. The proiDer method is to 
reason inductively from the intellectual and moral character of 
the people to the character of the schools. His logic leads to 
the conclusion that the New Englanders of a half century ago 
were unschooled and ignorant; the fact is, they were second in 
average intelligence and self-control to no other population on 
the globe. As a whole they must have been well taught, al- 
though the schools where they were taught may have differed, 
and did differ, widely from the regulation schools of to-day. 
The churches of one town may be fine pieces of architecture, 
fitted up with all the ''modern improvements,'" while those of 
another may be old-fashioned affairs, plain and even ugly; but 
it will not do to reason that vital religion is more flourishing in 
the former than in the latter. 



III. MORE TESTIMONY FROM DR. PEABODY AND G. B. EMERSON". 

Those who have followed the discussion hitherto will remem- 
ber that the name of Dr. Peabody, of Cambridge, Mass., has 
frequently appeared on its pages. On page 80 of his reply, Mr. 
Eickoff raises the question whether in my extracts from the 
Doctor I did not ''mistake his design." On this point I beg to 
say that the Doctor, writing February 5, 1877, used the fol- 
lowing language: 

" My Dear Sir: I thank you heartily for the copy of your address received 
a few days ago. I have read it with very great interest. I am thankful that 
you have spoken so plainly, and that you have sustained yoiu* position by so 
much testimony of unimpeachable authenticity. I am very solicitous that our 
Common-School system should become to our own and the next generation 
what it was to our fathers, and this cannot be so long as it remains the object 
of blind fetich worship. Your address cannot fail to strike a strong blow at 
the idolatry, and to do much toward arousing attention to the deficiencies and 
needs of the present system." 

But I have introduced the Doctor's name here to prepare the 

■way for the following interesting letter, in which he describes 

some features of the educational systems and methods of 'New 

England in the. last age: 

"Cambridge, February 25, 1S78. 
" My Dear Sir: — 

" I can only answer Mr. Rickoff's statements by replying, that my own, as 
quoted by him and you, are literally true, and that they do not relate to 1T90, 
nor yet to distinctively classical schools. 



OLD AND NEAV SCHOOLS. 13 

" My memory extends through the entire half century of which I spoke in 
my address. I was mj'self a teacher in 1826, 1827, and 1828, and I may not 
unaptly name two or three facts that lie very distinctly in my memory. First, 
as regards vacations, of course what I said did not apply to the district schools, 
which were kept for only (J or 7 months in the year, but to the all-year schools. 
I attended such a school for several years, without a single entire week's vaca- 
tion. Thanksgiving and the two days following it, the last Wednesday in May, 
with the three days following it, and the 4th of July, being our only stated va- 
cations, which were increased by perhaps from four to six public days beside. 
In the town of Salem, the second town in Massachusetts at that time, the entire 
amount of vacation allowed in the Public Schools was less than three weeks. 
Private schools were kept nearly or quite as continuously. I was for one year 
a tutor in a private family, and was not off of duty for two consecutive days in 
the whole year. I kept a private school in Portsmouth, N. H., for a year, 
and I was the first teacher there that reduced the school year to 48 weeks, 
with four vacations of a week each, which was a larger amount of vaca- 
tion than the Public Schools then enjoyed. As regards the education of 
teachers then, they were, on an average, men of much higher culture than 
the teachers of our Common Schools now are, though of less organizing 
and executive ability. Of the permanent Public Schools many were taught 
by liberally educated men who had fallen short of a liberal profession 
or failed of success — especially clergymen who had not found, or fallen out of, 
employment. My own father represented a class of teachers of whom I knew 
sevei-al. He had a classical education and meant to be a minister ; but bis course 
was cut short by failure of health, and he settled down contentedly, when 
convalescent, as a teacher of an all-year school of the grammar-school grade. 
As regards the country district schools, they were to a large degree taught by 
students from College, and it was the best and most ambitious scholars who 
were teachers. I knew many such who labored hard in their districts for the 
improvement of both pupils and parents. The year after I graduated I kept a 
country district school. I had for pupils young men and women several years 
my seniors, who were pursuing advanced studies. Such persons generally went 
to school in the winter till they were married. Besides college students there 
were at that time resident in many country towns, persons of superior culture 
and of gentlemanly position, who were in the habit of teaching winter schools. 
As to the amount taught irregularly in the schools of that day, I may name my 
own case, which was by no means unprecedented. I attended, till the year 
before I entered college, a common town school, where only the ordinary 
English branches were required. Under the tuition and with the encourage- 
ment of my teacher, I studied Latin to a very considerable extent, the rudi- 
ments of Greek, and an amount of mathematics fully equivalent to what is now 
required for admission to Harvard College. It was no uncommon thing for 
boys destined for college to have such furtherance in Common Schools. 

" But the great difference, of which I take due note in my address, is that 
the schools were then regarded as of prime importance in the families and 
homes of the pupils. When I kept a district school in an obscure town, I doubt 
whether there was a house in my district in which I was not invited as a visi- 
tor, and in which my school was not a matter of deep interest with the parents. 
The indifference to schools in the homes of the pupils is at this day the most 
discouraging symptom. Of course the utterly ignorant have no interest in 
them. But in many of the most cultivated families there is an entire aliena- 
tion of interest from the schools, and the children are made to feel that vaca- 



14 OUR COMMOX SCHOOLS. 

tion and extra-school engagements are their privilege— school-life a burden. 
Excuse this very hasty and gossiping letter, and believe me, very truly yours. 

"A. P. Peabodt." 

It will be remembered that Mr. Eickoff made several extracts 
from Mr. George B. Emerson's Lowell lecture, "Education in 
in Massachusetts: Early Legislation and History." I am under 
great obligations to him for calling my attention to this lecture; 
it contains some passages relative to Massachusetts education in 
former times, the quotation of which would have been very 
damaging to his argument. Let the reader note this one sen- 
tence : 

"I believe that, not comparatively, but absolutely, boys were better fitted 
for College then than they are now." 

And when the reader has so done, he can go on to ponder 
these more extended extracts: 

"A few men, whom we have known, have been obliged by force of circum- 
stances, to approach this heroic early education, and it would be a fair ques- 
tion: Would Mark Hopkins, Francis Wayland, Daniel Webster, Jared Sparks, 
Cornelius Felton, Thomas Hill, have been finer specimens of humanity, or even 
better scholars and teachers, if they had been put at 7 into schools, and 
kept there 10 months of every year till they entered college at 16, instead of 
giving their early years to the labors of the farm, the forest, and the work- 
shop? * * * 

" Everybody is now ready to admit the important place which natural and 
physical science should have in a liberal education; but all are not aware that 
such science, to be real, must be founded on personal observation. These boys 
were laying such a foundation. A boy engaged in stoning a well, in raising 
stones for a wall, or in drawing water from the well by an old fashioned well- 
pole, was studying the properties of the lever. In splitting logs, he became ac- 
quainted with the wedge. * * * 

" Then, again, in those early days there were ^no spelling books nor English 
grammars for children to waste their time upon. The deluge of children's 
books had not begun, r Children learned their letters from verses in the Bible — 
from those sublimest of all sentences : ' In the beginning God created the heaven 
and the earth ;' 'And God said, let there be light, and there was light. ' Boys 
and girls were obliged to read the few books they had, which were often the 
most excellent we have, again and again, till they knew them thoroughly, al- 
most by heart. * * * 

" The little time given to the Latin language was spent in learning and using 
the words essential to conversation, and in studying the language of Cicero and 
Virgil instead of the unintelligible generalizations of grammar — what John 
Milton calls 'the most intellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics,' so 
commonly begun with at the present day. * * * 

" Such was the necessary but real and :noble preparation for College which 
was given to nearly all the boys in Massachusetts purposing to receive the high- 
est education of the time. Has anything better been yet introduced to take the 
place of such preparation? Does the vast time given to arithmetic, destined to 



OLD AND NEW SCHOOLS. 15 

be never used ; or the innumerable lessons in geography destined to be speedily 
forgotten : or the volumes of choice and exquisite selections from the best and 
finest poetry and prose, most of it wholly beyond the capacity of those who are 
to read them— give a better preparation?" 

Dr. Peabody's letter iiiid these paragraphs from Mr Emerson 
outline, in part, a method of education that it is diflticult for the 
ail-system schoolmasters of this age to understand. But it was 
a method that very well answered the needs of the time; and it 
trained up some generations of men and women that, could they 
come back to earth, would quickly demonstrate that they were 
the equals in discipline and self-mastery of the men who have 
been educated according to the " new methods." 

IV. THE WEST POINT STATISTICS. 

What these are, it is not necessary at this late day to state. 
In my former paper, I gave 4 of my 38 pages to them; Mr. 
Eickoff has thought them Avorthy of 18 of his 87 pages. I must 
point out some of his fallacies. 

It is admitted that the ratio of the unsuccessful to the success- 
ful candidates for admission to the Military Academy has rapidly 
increased of late years; and it is a matter of public interest to 
find out why. Prof. Church said it was owing, for the most 
part, to the poor preparation of candidates as compared Avith 
former times. The Board of Visitors for 1874 said the statistics 
made it "clearly evident that in the schools of the country 
there is need of more thorough methods of instruction in the 
elementary branches." The Cleveland Superintendent says the 
West Point Professor and the Visitors are Avrong, and goes to 
work himself to account for the fact in question. On pages 
62-3 he gives a " summary of the j-easons Avhy the West Point 
argument should be rejected." These reasons I shall now dis- 
cuss: 

1. " The conditions of appointment have no relations to the duration or reg- 
ularity of previous school attendance, apjDlication to study, or native 
capacity." 

He has previously devoted 2 pages to a severe criticism of the 
method of appointment. We will grant for the argument's 
sake that this criticism is just. Mr. Rickotf knoAvs perfectly 
well that the method of appointment is the same, legally, that 
it Avas formerlv; and he must see. at least Avhen his attention is 



16 OUR commo:n" schools. 

called to it, that the method has nothing whatever to do with 
the matter now in hand, unless he can show, which he does not 
attempt to do, that, practically, it does not work as well as for- 
merly. If he were writing a history of West Point, or an argu- 
ment for a reorganization of the Academy, what he has to say 
would be pertinent, but here it has no pertinency whatever. 
The same thing may be said, however, of a good deal of mate- 
rial found in his bulky pamphlet. 

Again, Mr. Rickofi, after giving a supposititious history of the 
rejected candidate (p. 53), says: "His name may never have 
been entered upon the rolls of a public school." In a note 
(same page), he says: "If from a Southern State, the chances 
are 10 to one against it. * * If from a Northern 

State, the chances are about one out of five that he never at- 
tended the public schools for any great length of time." I do 
not hold him responsible in the second case for saying Avhat he 
does not mean (his meaning evidently is, the chances are four out 
of five "that he never," etc.); but I do hold him responsible for 
saying, in both cases, what no facts in his possession, or in the 
possession of anybody else, prove. Either conclusion can be 
reached only by an inductive inrpiiry that no man has made. 
In fact, Mr. EickofE holds that most of the rejected candidates 
have been taught in private schools or " so-called colleges" (see 
page 53, note). But it is well known that the vast majority of 
boys in the Northern States get their elementary instruction in 
the public schools; so that, if the number of failures at West 
Point is large, it is fair to infer that, in these schools, there is 
need of "more thorough instruction in the elementary 
branches,"' Mr. Eickoff cannot hear of boys prepared in public 
schools who have failed, either in Cincinnati, Dayton, Colum- 
bus, Cleveland, or other places. It is certainly very astonishing 
that members of Congress, in making appointments, should so 
often go to the private schools and colleges to appoint pupils 
who could not keep up in the public schools, sort of "tramps," 
when the public schools abound in such excellent material ! 

2. " The table shows that the examinations have been extremely variable, 
or else that the standard of education throughout the whole country has risen 
and fallen in curves more fantastic than the fluctuations of the stock market. 
That which requires a half century to effect appreciably in the general average, 
has become the variable quantity, and that which can be raised or depressed 
at will, or accidentally, has become the constant and invariable." 



OLD AND NEW SCHOOLS. 17 

All that Mr. Rickoff has to say touching the statistics that 
possesses the slightest logical value, comes under this head. 
Logically, this is the most effective part of his paper. Now, I 
have no doubt that the Academy standard has been raised, that 
the examinations are more severe than formerly, and that the 
examinations are 'Variable." What I mean is, I have no 
doubt that in all these things the Military Academy has shared 
in the general movement of our best seats of higher, technical, 
and professional learning. Owing to peculiar causes, the Acad- 
emy may have raised its standard more rapidly than other 
schools, and the elements of caprice and fitfulness may there 
play a larger part; but no man familiar with statistics can look 
over the table and not be impressed that there is something in 
it which these considerations do not explain. 

In his eagerness to destroy the force of the statistics in some 
way, Mr. Rickoff is not careful to keep his ways consistent 
with each other. He asks (p. 60): ''With such rapidly grow- 
ing inferiority of the material, how is it that the ratio of gradu- 
ations [ratio of the graduates to the admitted] has increased 
more than 50 per cent, within 30 or 40 years?" He then gives 
a table showing that, for quincpiennial periods beginning with 
1838 and closing with 1873, the per cents, run as follows: 37, 
46, 46, 45, 43, 58, 57. This is a fair demand, and the figures 
seem to be inconsistent with Prof. Church's statement that he 
has found less ability than formerly in the admitted candidates. 
But, strangely, Mr. Eickoff does not see that it is as much his 
business to account for this fact as it is Prof. Church's. Let it 
be remembered that the great fact to be explained is, the grow- 
ing number of the rejected as compared with the accepted can- 
didates; that Mr. Rickolf denies Church's explanation and sets 
up one of his own, which is, a bad system of appointments, a 
higher standard, and stricter examinations. Let Mr. Rickoff 
account for this growing ratio provided, (1) The method does 
not work as well as formerly; (2) The entrance demands are 
greater; (3) The examinations are stricter. No other solution 
than this occurs to me: The excellent and improved instruc- 
tion in the Academy saves an increasing number of students, 
although not so well prepared as in former years. 

3. "I have shown that these examinations do not indicate, even remotely, 
the condition of the common education of the people in different States at the 

3 



18 



OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 



same period, and in consequence that they afford no standard by which we may 
judge the efficiency of the schools at different periods in the same State." 

This reason is based on a table (p. 61) that I here reproclnce, 
changing the basis of the first cobinin from 1,000 to 100, to 
make it correspond with the second. 



STATES. 



Florida 

Massachusetts 

Ohio 

New York . . . 

Virginia 

Maine 

Pennsylvania . 

Maryland 

Connecticut . . 



Number out of 100 

White Males 
Between 15 and 21 
WHO Cannot Write. 


Per Cent. Rejected 

AT West Point 

Examinations 

Since 1870. 


32.5 





3.7 


33 


5.3 


34 


3.3 


37 


24.6 


37 


3.1 


40 


4.0 


43 


8.2 


43 


4.2 


45 



This table and the "reason" based on it are enough to make 
even a statistician langh. Mr. Rickoff reasons as though the 
ratio of the rejected candidates to the appointees in a given 
State were equal to the ratio of the illiterates between 15 and 21 
to the whole population between the same ages, in the same State. 
This would be true if the candidates were taken indiscriminately 
from the literates and illiterates; but it is fair to assume that the 
aim is to choose those who can at least read and write. The Flor- 
ida candidates, for example, are not chosen from the 32.5 persons 
in 100 who cannot write, but from the 67.5 who can. There is, 
therefore, no possible pertinency in this reason, unless it can 
be shown that the education of the literates is poor in quality 
when the number of illiterates is great. But this Mr. RickofE 
lias not attempted. Nor can it be shown to be true. In a 
society where social classes are plainly marked^ the quality of 
education may even improve as the number of illiterate persons 
increases. In the South, for example, the superior classes, from 
which the appointments have been made, may be well educated, 
and in fact are, while the negroes and poor whites grovel in ig- 
norance. 

Again, only two candidates from Florida reported at the 
Academy from 1870 to 1874. Neither one was rejected ; but 
this can be no meter of the educational condition of the State. 



OLD AXD 2SrE\V SCHOOLS. 19 

The basis is far too narrow. If all the boys iu the State had 
been illiterate save two, and the two had been sent to West 
Point, they would have been admitted if well prepared. Once 
more, it is folly to suppose that the West Point statistics will 
account for the enormous illiterate population of the South, 
Tblack and white ; all that has ever been claimed for them is that 
they are a meter of the education of the classes from which they 
:are drawn ; and this they are. 

From 1838 to 1874, inclusive, there "reported at the Academy 
ior examination, exclusive of those "at large," 3,180 candidates. 
Of these 1,254 came from the old slave-holding States, and 954 
from free States and Territories. Only 351 of the slave-State 
■candidates were rejected, while of the others there were 381. 
These are the ratios: 251 to 1,354, and 381 to 924, or one in five 
in the one case, and one in three and a quarter in the other. 
What is the explanation of this strong preponderance in favor of 
the South? This is a crucial test of Mr. Rickolf's private- 
school and ''so-called college" theory; it is well known that 
from 1838 to 1874 private schools and colleges played a much 
greater part in Southern education, as a whole, and public 
schools a much less part, than in Northern education. That is, 
where the Public Schools were the more prominent in education 
the failures were much the more numerous. This fact gives the 
West Point argument a firm support ; it shows that the statis- 
tics are "amenable to a law," Mr. Rickoff to the contrary not- 
withstanding. So much for Mr. Rickoff's labored refutation. 

My attention was first called to the West Point statistics by 
General Garfield. He thought they had a general educational 
significance, and so did I. The Board of Visitors at West Point 
ior 1875, consisting of S. 0. Rowan, General Jacob Ammen, 
General N. B. Baker, Wm. Dowd, H. H. Fay, President D. 0. 
Gilman, Professor J. F. Kellogg, Senators Allison and Ransom, 
B. F. Butler, Thomas J. Cramer, and S. A. Hurlburt, of the 
House of Representatives, thought so. Professor Church thought 
so, and so did General Sherman. Possibly all these men, and 
many more, are in error ; possibly the statistics have no such 
significance. But if they are finally shown to be worthless, I 
have not so committed myself to them that I should feel under 
obligation to commit liara hara, as Japanese statesmen do when 
they fail in a line of public policy. 



20 OUR COMMON" SCHOOLS. 

Since this discussion began, Prof. Church, whose name has 
been so often used, has died, full of years and of labors. He 
may have been in error in his views of the present subject, but 
I hope not again to hear him denounced as a dishonest witness. 
No one can question his ability or his sincerity. Probably the 
last contribution that he made to the discussion was the letter 
that I publish as an Appendix to this paper. I hope it will not 
be passed unread. Especially do I ask the reader to observe that 
Prof. Michie, whose authority on a minor point Mr. Rickoff 
appeals to with so much satisfaction, holds with Prof. Church 
on the main point — the inferior preparation of candidates as 
compared with former years. 

I close this Part with saying, I have never said that, on the 
whole, the old schools were better than the new ones. I have 
claimed a superiority in some things, and nothing that has been 
brought to my attention has shaken my faith in that claim. I 
have no doubt, for example, that for pupils who do not receive 
very much or very systematic instruction, the number of whom 
is still unfortunately great, the old-fashioned no-system school, 
where they could at least pick up some odds and ends of learn- 
ing, is better than the all-system school, where they are 
crushed with the very heaviness of the machinery that environs 
them. Again, I have denied both the justness and the whole- 
someness of the current deijreciation of the old education and 
glorification of the new. What is more, I have said, in language 
as strong as I knew how to use, that the old school, even if it 
could be reproduced, would not answer the needs of to-day. 



PART SECOND. 



SOME FORMER CRITICISMS OF THE NEW SCHOOLS. 

A cultivated man, well known in public life, liimself an old 
teacher, remarked to me after reading Mr. KickoJffi's paper: 
''Either the Superintendent does not see the real issue that you 
have raised, or he is unwilling to meet it." And a teacher of 
keenly critical mind said: "Mr. Rickoff has never seen the 
gravamen of your paper to this day." Certainly, it is necessary 
for me to re-state 

I. THE REAL ISSUE. 

The question, "What are the relative merits of the old and 
the new schools?" is much less important than the question, 
^' What sort of schools have we now ?" His failure to see the 
bearings of these two questions is Mr. Rickoff's greatest logical 
blunder. 

On page 18 of my pamphlet I took leave of all questions per- 
taining to the past history of Common Schools in our country, 
thus: 

" The evidence now presented is as much as can be digested at one sitting. 
Perhaps it is not sufficient to prove a deterioration in the Common Schools of 
the country. Perhaps evidence to justify that assertion has not been accumu- 
lated, or does not exist; but that presented is certainly deserving of grave con- 
sideration. It shows, at least, a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with 
the schools, and that this dissatisfaction is felt by persons of exceptional abili- 
ties ana culture, as well as exceptional opportunities to get at the facts bearing 
on the present inquiry. Besides, it proves that our Common-School education 
is not what it ought to be, and that our school system needs much criticism 
and revision. While I waive the further discussion of the question, whether 
we do read or spell better than our fathers and grandfathers, I avow the 
opinion that many of the tendencies of the prevalent system are wrong and 
need correction." 



22 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

After writing this passage, our educational history and West 
Point passed wholly out of my mind. From that jDoint on, all 
that I say of ''inferior education" means "inferior" as com- 
pared with what we should have. I go on to state defects and 
tendencies, and to account for them. The remaining 20 pages is 
the most practical and valuable |)art of my pamphlet, iii my own 
estimation at least ; and so I have held from the first. Now, 
Mr. Rickoff's failure to understand the relation of things can be 
exhibited in this way. He devotes 70 jjages to correcting my 
history and replying to my comparison of the new and old edu- 
cations, both of which I despatched in 18 pages, and gives 1? 
pages to replying to my 20 pages of criticism on the schools as 
they are! What is the explanation of this? Is it easier to fill 
a pamphlet with quotations concerning our former educational 
condition than to dissipate the daily growing cloud of objections 
to our complex system of schools? Certainly, Mr. Eickoff's 
confusion of mind is most remarkable. Nothing, in his o^iinion, 
calls for notice unless it has some bearing on the question of 
''degeneracy." He declines even to discuss the wisdom of sub- 
stituting women for men, because "the argament urged on this 
point will have little weight, except on the supposed ground 
that there has been a deterioration in the work of elementary 
instruction." This is equivalent to saying, in general, unless a 
degeneracy can be shown it follows that our schools are just 
what they should be. Of course, Mr. Rickoff, in other places, 
admits that the schools might be improved, but here I am show- 
ing the direction of his logic. He even goes so far as to say: 
"The evidence of a few competent witnesses" — to what, he 
does not say — " and a thorough refutation of his West Point 
argument, would be sufficient to meet every point in his ad- 
dress.'' With this I cannot agree; on the other hand, if the 
West Point argument should be demolished, what I have always 
considered the material ^loints of my paper would still stand 
in their integrity. 

My pamphlet made a different impression on the editor of 
the Oliio Educational Monthly for in his notice (May, '77) he 
spoke of the points disparaged by Mr. Rickoff thus: "We con- 
sider them vastly more forcible than the imposing arguments 
drawn from the West Point examinations." To show that na 



SOME FOEMER CRITICISMS. 23 

man has any excuse for not seeing tlie gravamen of my paper, 
I shall here reproduce the more essential parts of four different 
paragraphs (pp. 2 1-4) : 

"First of all, we may as well understand that the prevalent system of 
schools, in its essential features, if we are to have Common Schools at all, is 
inevitable. The argument for the graded system is, in Ihe main, the advantages 
ofifered by the principle of a division of labor, and it is irrefutable. We 
must accept the system as a man accepts his wife, for ' better or worse.' In the 
broadest sense, President Oilman's words are true : ' Theoretically it has many 
defects ; practically it is adapted to the circumstances.' Dr. Peabody admits 
that for towns and cities the graded system is a necessity. We may go farther 
and say, it is, taking everything into account, a desideratum. If the educa- 
tional labor of two centuries had been abortive, or if it had resulted in a mon- 
strous progeny, we might well despair. * * * But I do affirm that, if we 
are going to educate the vast armies of children found in the towns and cities, 
especially, we must have a physical apparatus, a legal mechanism, and an 
organized force of teachers that are adequate to do the work. Sporadic or 
spontaneous movements are inadequate. Whatever the relative merits of the 
no-system method of .50 years ago and the all-system method of to-day, the 
former could no more do the work that now needs to be done than our military 
system in the war of 1813 would have answered the purposes of the nation in 
the late rebellion. » * * The old-fashioned partizan warfare of the French 
Wars and of the Revolution, or even of the border to-day, developed in the 
soldiers a personal intrepidity and a fertility of resource that regular warfare 
does not ; but partizan warfare never creates an army, and hence is not adapted 
to great military operations. * * * What the partizan soldiers of the last 
century were to the Union army of this, that the old schools are to the new 
schools. The law of compensation holds here as everywhere. You cannot have 
the greatest personal intrepidity and the best organization— the most individu- 
ality of character and the most imposing array of school children and school- 
masters. The question is : How shall we combine elements most wisely ? * * 
I have spoken of certain defects of the graded system as inherent, and as 
incapable of elimination. So they seem to me. But these defects exist in 
different degrees; in a maxitnum or a miiumtnn. The problem is, to reduce 
them to a minimum ; to make a system that must always be rigid and unyield- 
ing to a degree as elastic and pliable as possible. '' 

Here is the real issue: "What are the theoretical defects and 
the practical difficulties of the new schools ? How shall we 
combine elements most wisely? How shall we reduce the defects 
of the new system to a minimuvi 9 And I insist that this issue 
has not been met. Mr. Rickoff devotes a few pages — that I 
shall soon examine — to three or four questions; but I affirm 
that the most important matters contained in " Our Common- 
School Education" have never been discussed at all, at least 
by ths North-Eastern Ohio Teachers' Association. I shall 
re-state these matters and look at the Superintendent's replies. 



24: OUR COMMON^ SCHOOLS. 

II. RIGIDITY AND FORMALISM. 

Superintendent Rickoff meets these points with general de- 
nials. The Graded-School system is not rigid and un-elastic — the 
teachers do not tend to formalism and routine — the course is 7iof 
over-crowded — and so on. Then I would respectfully ask: 
What is the explanation of the constant assertion of these 
things in educational journals, in school rej^orts, and in the 
public addresses of teachers? What is the explanation of the 
long and animated discussion about examinations and promo- 
tions? From Mr. Eickoff's point of view this is all uncalled for, 
and is, therefore, folly. I used no colors in my picture that I 
cannot match on the palettes of Public-School men. But I 
have heard this general denial before, and I confess it always 
reminds me of a caustic journalist who said, a year or two ago: 
"When politicians say politics do not need to be reformed, it 
proves only that the politicians are a part of jiolitics, and 
therefore part of the thing calling for reform." But, to be just 
to him, he attempts specific answers. It is difficult to treat 
them with much seriousness, but I shall do my best. 

1. He seeks to show (pp. ?0-3) that to keep pupils who stand 
50 or 60, TO, and 90 in the same class is, really, an advantage to 
all of them. "A few facts of science have a lodgement in the 
memory" of the 50 or 60-per-center; the 70-per-center under- 
stands and apijlies rules, and masters some jirinciples; the 
90-per-center possesses process and principle, "and gains an 
insight into the deeper relations of things."' Then "clearness 
of statement, readiness, precision and power in the use of lan- 
guage," is another field that the bright boy can cultivate, while 
his dull companion is working n]) his "few facts of science.'' 
"You have stimulated," he says, "the sluggish boy up to his 
highest capacity, and you have compelled and habituated the 
bright boy to dwell upon a subject of study till it is understood, 
according to the strength and maturity of his intellect." "You 
have done for these boys what was most profitable for each." 
Mr. Rickoff's remarks here are a valuable suggestion to the 
teacher who has different grades of ability in his class; if wise, 
such teacher will have classes within the class. In this way he 
will gain partial practical relief from the evil complained of — 
relief without which the class-system is intolerable. But as an 



SOME FOKMER CRITICISMS. 25 

answer to the objection, these remarks have not the slightest 
force. Ever^^hod}' knows that the bright pnpil falls to the level 
•of the mediocre with much greater facility than the dullard 
rises to that level. Besides, Mr. Rickoff's argument assumes 
that the bright boy will not get his superior knowledge, mastery 
•of principles, clearness and power of statement, etc., unless held 
in leash with dullards, while the fact is just the contrary. The 
bright boy never does such good work, or so much of it, as when 
with bright boys. The fact is. Earns naturally moves at a pace 
•of his own, and if driven with a "scrub," matters are not 
mended by Mr. Rickoff telling him, " Rarus, if you only run the 
ground passed over r?2ore and better than the 'scrub,' the arrange- 
ment is best for both of you'M As I said before, ''In no case 
can or do the brightest minds have a fair chance" in such a 
scheme. 

Here I Avill add, some of our best Colleges are coming to 
regard the class-system as a burden. Ten years ago Harvard 
made her course of study much more flexible than before, with 
excellent results; and Michigan University has now followed her 
example. The Michigan new departure has been described as 
"substituting for the old system, which aims at the progress of 
u class, one that aims at the progress of tlie individual.'" So 
far are the Michigan Faculty from endorsing Mr. Rickoff's peda- 
gogics, that they "believe that the plan proposed furnishes the 
student a great stimulus to make as rapid progress and as large 
attainments as he can, instead of contenting himself with doing 
the average work of men in a class. It Avill relieve,*' they say, 
"the more capable scholar from the necessity of regulating his 
progress by that of class-mates whom he might easily outstrip." 
(See "Announcement," May, 1878.) 

Mr. Rickotf's new discovery in educational science is simply 
an old device for mitigating an admitted evil. I can but think 
that, on reflection, he will withdraw the opinion that to harness 
the 60, 70, and 90-per-centers in one team is "most profitable 
for each.'" We will so harness them if Ave can do no better; 
but let us not aggravate the matter by pretending that it is 
good in itself. 

3. Mr. Rickoff says (p. 73) President Eliot's charge— that 
the popular SA'stem "tends to wipe out all individual differences, 



36 OUR COMMON" SCHOOLS. 

to destroy ambition," and to produce ''an average product,"' 
etc.. is a speculative view. I see no reason to retract or change 
anything that I have written on this point. It is easy to make 
a school like the die through which the old-fashioned coojiers 
drove the dowel-pins used in fastening together their "head- 
ing," or like a lathe that brings all pieces of wood to the same 
size and shape. The greatest difference between savage and civil- 
ized life is this: one is like, the other unlike. When you have 
seen one Sioux, you have seen all Sioux — when one Calmuck, all 
Calmucks; but when j^ou have seen one civilized man, you have 
not seen all civilized men. Mr. Herbert Spencer has demon- 
strated that the evolutional law is, From the homogeneous to the 
heterogeneous. A sound education Avill observe this law. 

3. Mr. Rickoff supposes (p. 81), ''Mr. Hinsdale will allow 
that a somewhat specific course of study, written or unwritten, 
is indispensable if we are to have Graded Schools at all." So my 
friend Dr. Williams, of the Cleveland Central High School, 
conjectured in discussion that Mr. Hinsdale has his classes and 
methods. To both of whom I say, certainly. But the point is 
this: There are systems and systems, methods and methods; and 
the work before us is to combine elements most wisely, and 
reduce defects to a minimum. We must not forget that the 
system and the method are for the pupil, not the pupil for 
them. Then much of the current talk about "methods," 
especially " new methods," is the utterest cant. I would ask, 
what is there really new in method after all? And has not good 
teaching been done in the same way all the time from the days 
of Socrates? It is curious how l)oth teachers and the public run 
crazy after new things. The venerable Andrew Freese, who 
impressed himself on a whole generation of Cleveland children 
as no man can impress himself at this day, writes thus ("Early 
History of the Cleveland Public Schools," p. 128.): 

" Changes in Schools and School-Teaching.— Schools and their methods 
are varied, like many other things, to conform to popular notions, or to what 
is for the time the prevailing style. There was a time when Parley's Histories 
were a ' new discovery ' in adaptation, and every child capable of reading 
was set to learning the history of the United States. The style of imparting 
oral instruction to children was in imitation of ' Peter Parley. ' Then there 
was a period of mental arithmetic — great attention was given to the study. 
The book of books was declared to be Colburn's First Lessons, and his method 
was universally adopted as the true method. There was, too, a blackboard 



SOME FORMER CRITICISMS. ^7 

era, when blackboard exercises were made a great feature in every school, and 
the eye was constantly addressed. Of the Cleveland Schools it may be said 
that the Peter Parley period reached from their organization to about the year 
1846. Mental arithmetic held its way for 20 years, reaching its culmination in 
the years just preceding 1S60. Blackboards, wide and long, for the simultaneous 
exercise of whole classes, began to be used in 1845. They were used with great 
enthusiasm in 1850, and reached their highest appreciation and widest use a 
few years later. 

" In each of these periods, teachers fancied they had hit upon a very excel- 
lent thing, and that it would, without doubt, be an abiding good. In the suc- 
cession of changes it was lost or went out of fashion — none could say how, 
when, or for what reason." 

Mr. Rickoff does not formally deny a tendency to formalism 
on the part of teachers, hut he attaches no importance to the 
charge. He mocks at me (p. 80) for saying: "• As though the 
time consumed by a child in walking down stairs were an im- 
portant feature of a school!" But whether a given sentence is 
the proper subject of mocking or not, depends on the use to 
which it is put. It is not necessary for Mr. Rickoff to point 
out to me that getting out of a building is sometimes an im- 
portant matter, especially when its occujiants are numerous. 
But my point was this: the teacher has a tendency to destroy 
school perspective — to exaggerate little things — to sink the 
important; and what Mr. Rickoff is pleased to call my "silli- 
ness" is simply an illustration of the fact. I still deny that the 
time used by a pupil in going down stairs is "an important 
feature of a school," and run the risk of sensible men calling me 
silly. Mr. Rickoff thinks the bean and horse-leg illustrations 
do not correspond with facts. A very competent judge writes 
me thus concerning some features of the teaching in the Illinois 
Normal schools : 

" In their kinder-garten department they adhere strictly to formula. They 
'are careful to say, ' Two beans and three beans are Ave beans, because two and 
three are five,' or ' therefore two and three are five.' 

" They fail to distinguish between the important and unimportant; the teach- 
ers often insist as long and emphatically on some little matter as on a great 
principle. For example, jiftotdcs is studied till the slightest shade of sound be- 
comes black; the minutiae of geography till a student can draw a map more 
accurately than the Creator made the country. They often spend a whole 
term on South America." 

As I have mingled with teachers, especially in their conven- 
tions, I have sometimes been amused at the trifling cpiestions on 
which they spend much time and thought. Let me illustrate.. 



^8 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

It apjjears from the Educational Monthly (Feb., 1877) that, 
some time before, a meeting of superintendents was held at Fort 
Wayne, Indiana, for discussion and common improvement. The 
assembly propounded questions, discussed them, and expressed 
their opinions by voting on them. From the two solid pages of 
questions thus disposed of, given by the Montlily I give these 
examples: 

" In what year should a pupil begin to practice penmanship with a lead-pen- 
cil? Answer— First year, 40 per cent. ; second year, 40 per cent. ; third year, 20 
per cent. 

"When a teacher is absent for a day is it best to procure a substitute? Answer 
— Yes, 8.5 per cent. 

"Should pupils be allowed to make up lost lessons? Answer — Yes, 100 per 
cent." 

This is enough of this pedagogic frivolousness. As to procur- 
ing a substitute when a teacher is absent, after some meditation, 
I would submit this bold proposition, though with much timid- 
ity, that it would depend, in some degree, on whether one worth 
having could be got. 

The editor asks "in all seriousness"' whether the extract he 
makes from the report of the Fort Wayne meeting " does not 
indicate that superintendents, as well as the teachers under 
them, need to study more thoroughly the philosophy of educa- 
tion and its application to practice." I would ask, in all levity, 
whether it does not "indicate" that some of these superinten- 
dents and teachers need more mother wit? 

As you are aware, there is in this country a respectable though 
not very numerous body of religionists called Tunkers. These 
excellent people preserve that beautiful and simple act of the 
early Church, the "kiss of love." But there was among them 
one open question, and lately a long conference was held to settle 
it. The question was this: "Whether in sending around the 
kiss of charity, it is best to begin first on the right hand, among 
the men, or on the left, among the women."' After due and 
grave deliberation, the following answer was given: 

"Considered, that in sending around the kiss of charity, it may be best to 
begin first on the right hand, among the men ; but if that is not convenient, it 
wijl do no harm to begin first on the left hand, among the women ; or, on both 
hands at the same time." 

In fact, the Graded-School idea as conceived by the martinet 
is, to set the children of a town or citv in a solid frame-work, 



SOME FOKMER CRITICISMS. 29' 

containing 12 compartnionts from front to rear, and then 
to sliove the whole forward at a uniform vehjcity, without 
regard to the surface of the ground or the lengtli of the chil- 
dren's legs. I am well aware that our best managers labor to 
introduce as many hinges and springs as is consistent witli the 
nature of the machine, but the regulation school master, both 
from native and acquired bias of mind, likes the machine better 
the stiffcr and firmer it can be made. 

This bit of character given by Kinglake to the Tsar Nicholas 
("Crimean War," I. p. 62), is suggestive in more ways than one: 

"He was too military to be warlike; and was not only without the qualities 
for wielding an army in the field, but was mistaken also as to the way in which 
the best soldiers are made ; under his sway Russia was so opprt ssively drilled 
that much of the fire and spirit of enterprise which are needed for war was 
crushed out by military training. No man, however, could toil with more zeal 
than he did in that branch of industry which seeks to give uniformity and 
mechanic action to bodies of men. He was an unwearied inspector of troops. 
He kept close at hand great numbers of small wooden images clothed in various 
uniforms, and one of the rooms of his favorite palace was filled with these mili- 
tary doUs.' 

What it suggests here is, many teachers are too accomplished 
schoolmasters to be educators. To explain the break-down of 
the Orimeaii War, intelligent Russians said the Emperor drilled 
out of the officers their energy, individuality, and moral force; 
''the worthlessuess of the drill-sergeant's regime was proved by 
bitter experience." 

It is well-known to students of human nature, that the "ma- 
chine" tendency is one of its strongest tendencies. We have 
machine politics, machine religion, and machine education. In 
no place is there larger room for this tendency than in the 
graded schools. The same tendency that leads the mountain- 
eers of the Himalayas to construct praying machines conducts 
some teachers into practices hardly less absurd. The teacher's 
mind, fixed so much on little things, accents, the dotting of i's 
and the crossing of t's, tends to come to a point ; and the fact 
that the whole system is organized on the hirarchal plan nar- 
rows responsibility and stifles thought. The teacher meekly 
accepts methods from the Superintendent or his assistants ; an 
excellent thing for weak teachers lacking in ideas, but death to 
all inventive minds. Dr. E. E. White (" Problems in Graded- 



30 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

School Management/' p. 7), says a supervising principal once 

said to him: 

"It is idle to ask my teachers to read professional works. They follow the 
prescribed course of study, and look to me for the methods. Their ambition is 
to do their work precisely as I direct, and they do this without inquiring 
whether my methods are correct or incorrect." 

Dr. Wliite is right in saying this case " illustrates the tenden- 
cy of the system where administered as a mechanism;" he might 
have said, the IJnecessary result. There is no place where a 
crochety, a bumptious, or tyrannical man can do more harm 
than at the head of the public schools of a large city. I shall 
now introduce the testimony of several competent witnesses to 
some of the points made. 

A veteran teacher of wide repute writes me a long letter that 
I thus summarize, preserving his own language: 

"I am confident that you have got a correct view of the situation. I do not 
want to believe it; it is painful for me to believe, indeed to know, that in mat- 
ters of Common-School education we are really losing ground. It is so in the 
cities even, all their boasting to the contrary notwithstanding. It is so in this 
city. I know very well that every external thing indicates progress. To be 
sure there is progress. See our elegant school-buildings! What finely furnished 
roomsl What excellent appliances of all sorts! The average cost per scholar 
annually is in the neighborhood of $25.00. Sui-ely the boys and girls ought to 
read well; they ought to spell well; they ought to be well instructed in arith- 
metic—better than they were before. Are they? No, sir. I undertake to say 
that in reading and arithmetic— especially in these— the schools are far behind 
what they were 20 or 25 years ago. One very sad thing about it is that from 
circumstances of home, the majority of those who send their children to the 
Public Schools are poor, or comparatively so. More than half of the children 
are obliged to leave school and go to work. Indeed, it is found that at the age 
of 13 only a little more than one-third are found who were taught in the primary 
grades. A few of these get up into the A Grammar— fewer to the High 
School. We make a great parade in showing off the 'graduates,' but who 
thinks or inquires about these lower graduates? Who takes the measurement 
of their attainments, calculates their standing in an array of figures, prints 
them with congratulatory notes added? Nobody. Silently they slink away 
and we hear no more of them. There is not a shadow of doubt in my mind but 
what a common District School, the old-fashioned sort, would be far better 
adapted to this class of children, these earlier graduates, than the strictly 
Graded Schools operated as the models now are. It will be found, I think, 
that the fault does not lie altogether in the Graded-school system, but in a 
departure from normal mithods of instruction. Positively and seriously, I don't 
know of anything so abnormal as the method now called normal. I think it is 
clear that in constructing schools and managing them we should keep as near 
the family plan as is possible. The father element must be there as well as the 
mother element. We now eliminate the former or mostly so, leaving the pupils 



SOME FORMER CRITICISMS. 31 

lialf-orphaned. The lady teachers who have charge of our Grammar Schools 
here deserve a great deal of credit for what they are doing, or what they are 
attempting to do, but does any mortal man believe that their services are even 
half as valuable to that grade of scholars as such teachers as we formerly em- 
ployed would be?" 

I also give the main parts of a letter received from another 
widely and favorably known Ohio teacher: 

"Not merely is the number of studies increased, but the methods alleged 
to be followed are not followed. Besides this, as I tried to point out some years 
ago, object lessons are useful to awaken or sustain interest, but the pupil who 
expects to master his topic must study hard the results of others, and these 
wiser men, and do an immense amount of pure memorizing, accepting facts 
which require skillful experimenting to establish. I agree with jou that it is 
pure nonsense to require a class to spend an hour in proving that a horse has 
four legs and a boy two. Just such nonsense abounds in most of the text books 
written on the new system. A teacher of my acquaintance took an hour to 
dilate on the difference between cohesion and adhesion, and afterward told me 
that the great thing was not the thing taught but the method. Many of these 
new methods are so concerned with developing the method as to leave out of 
sight the thing to be taught. An immense amount of time is consumed in mere 
trifles. I could name a set of books in which some 30 or 40 grades of color are 
named and other minutite given for the sake of training the observation; use- 
less if acquired. I desire to see a boy's education well balanced, but the thing 
which I am coming to desire more than anything else is that he shall learn 
some one thing thoroughly. Once in a while I have occasion to employ arith- 
metic in solving some chemical problem, and am astonished to find such inabil- 
ity to use the simplest methods." 

In a second letter this teacher retnrns to the subject: 

" I object in toto (1) To the study of German in the lower schools; it is bad 
pedagogy, bad economy, and is, moreover, bad politically. (2) To the system 
of carrying on the same study, as geography, arithmetic, or grammar, through 
six or eight years ; much better wait till the pupil is ready for it, and then set- 
tle the thing at once. (3) To the twaddle which has got into the schools under 
the name of natural science. At a late examination in botany the pupil was 
asked the shape of a turnip, and after a series of questions learned the import- 
ant fact that ' napiform ' means turnip-shaped. I also object, not in toto, but 
to the excessive development of many such subjects as music and drawing. 
Many of these things have their day and cease to be. I have been through a 
number of them myself. Can you not recollect what a furor we once had about 
elocution? about gymnastics? about composition? The evil now is, as I take it, 
that many things are attempted but few things are done well." 

This correspondent's remarks on "furors" reminds one of the 
late furor about "commercial studies'' and "business education." 
He reminds me also of the remark of an eminent attorney living 
in a not far-distant town, "My children learn little in the Pub- 
Jic Schools but the rules." 



32 OUK COMMON SCHOOLS. 

The late Dr. Dimmock, of Adams Academy, wrote thus: 

" Our schools,— our whole system of education, has been growing more and 
more into machinery. By the increase of the size of schools, the class, or at 
best the division of the class, has become the unit. Now boys and girls cannot 
be treated as so much raw material, to be put into one room of a factory and 
turned out the desired manufactured article. I do not say that they cannot be 
taught a certain mass of facts together. Mr. Gradgrind could do that. But a 
knowledge of all such facts is not education, and their influence is worthless for 
any real hold upon the minds and affections of those who learn them." 

Dr. Dimmock then went on to sliow that, in the best sense,, 
class-teaching cannot succeed ; that " each one needs to have his 
character perceived or studied, and a few Avords addressed to him 
then, adapted to the actual living boy, are of vastly more value 
than hours of precept given to the class of which he is a part."' 

The Public Graded School is a comparatively recent idea. It is 
a valuable addition to systematic education, but, unfortunately,, 
has been abused. In entire forgetfulness of the brocard of 
Euclid, "There is no royal road to learning," both teachers and 
the public, so soon as they got the idea into their heads, cried 
out in childish exultation: "Now we have found it ; this makes 
education easy ; we have entered the promised land flowing with 
milk and honey!" This childishness is a part of that supreme 
reliance on machinery, to the exclusion of inspiration and per- 
sonal force, which I soon shall have occasion to mention again. 
For a generation our schoolmasters have gone on developing the 
system, the public supporting them with abundant money and 
influence ; and now, when the work is called perfect, and we 
are being called on to fall down and worship at the sound of 
the flute, dulcimer, sackbut, cornet, and all kinds of music, it 
is seen by the discerning that the Graded School is only an 
appliance, that it leaves education to brain and heart where it 
was before, and that the new system has become inflexible and 
tyrannous. 

III. MULTIPLICITY OF STUDIES AND SUPERFICIALITY. 

Mr. Rickoff denies (p. 83) that there is now, or for 25 years 
has been, a tendency to include in the Public-school course more 
studies ; but admits that much more work is required in the 
same study than formerly. He gives some statistics showing how 
much larger the text books are than they were early in the cen- 



SOME FORMER CRITICISMS. 33 

tury, especially the arithmetics and grammars. He calls the 
growth of the Common-school studies ''enormous," and says 
they ''have become more than proportionally difficult as they 
have expanded ;" and thinks we have carried '* the study of the 
so-called common branches too far." I fail to see why this is 
not an admission of the spirit of Prof. Church's charge — too 
much surface and too shallow tillage. A well-known Ohio High 
School principal admitted to me that the rudiments of learning 
are not taught as thoroughly as when he was a boy, but said: 
" We do something else." I asked what, and he said: " The sci- 
ences." He closed the dialogue with saying, ''The trouble now 
is the schools are gorged with studies." This was a year and a 
half ago. Since that time I have noticed a tendency to move the 
fences surrounding the Public-School territory "in ; " as I have 
also noticed a tendency to give considerably more "play" to 
parts of the machine. I was much interested, too, in a conversa- 
tional discussion some months ago in Mr. Rickoff's office. One 
of the High School principals present deplored the want of "in- 
tellectual courage " among the pupils. I could but query, wheth- 
er the graded system, as commonly administered, does not tend 
to repress ambition, to create a feeling of dependence, and thus 
fail to further the growth of that very courage which is so im- 
portant a factor in the intellectual life. Certain I am that, in 
some quarters, we do not find that acquisitiveness and appetency 
for knowledge — that mental hardihood — which once obtained. 
Here I shall introduce the testimony of a distinguished En- 
glishman who visited our shores last year, Rev. R. W. Dale, 
D. D. While here he studied our popular education with great 
care and intelligence, and much the longest of the three papers 
entitled, " ImiDressions of America," in which he has summed 
up his observations of American life, is devoted to that subject. 
He throws some light on the lack of "intellectual courage" 
(pp. 155-7): 

" Very much of the teaching which I heard was, in a sense, too good. Every- 
thing was made so plain and so easy that there was no hard work left to the 
scholars. This struck me again and again in schools of every grade. One of 
the most convenient examples which I remember of this fault was in a girls' 
High-School. I forget whether it was in Philadelphia or New York. The fifth 
proposition of the first book of Euclid was on the board. The teacher — a lady 
— analyzed the proof of the proposition with perfect skill, showed her class the 

2 



34 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

successive points which had to be demonstrated, and how they were demon- 
strated. Nothing could have been more clear; the dullest girl in the room 
could hardly have failed to get complete possession of the proof. The pupils 
were expected to study the proposition at home and to bring it up the next 
day. But all the work had been done for them. When the class was over, I 
asked the lady whether she believed that this was the right way of teaching 
mathematics, and whether she did not think the girls would derive more bene- 
fit from their studies if she left them to do more of the work themselves. She 
said: 'When I was a girl I was not helped in this way; I had to dig out every- 
thing as best I could ; I was thrown upon myself ; but the girls have so many 
subjects to study now that they would never get through their work unless 
they were taught as I have been teaching them.' I suggested that, when the 
principal object of a class was to give information, it was reasonable enough to 
enable the pupils to get it with as little trouble as possible; but that girls 
studied the fifth proposition in Euclid for the sake of the discipline, not for the 
sake of learning the mere fact that the angles at the base of an isosceles trian- 
gle are equal. She answered, ' Yes, that is quite true, and I often think that 
we are on the wrong track altogether. We had a different method when I 
was young ; but with our present range of subjects we have no choice ; the 
teachers must do everything for the scholars.' This seemed to me to be one 
of the weak points in the American educational method ; and on two or three 
occasions when I had the opportunity of examining a class in a High-School or 
a Normal School, I thought I recognized its evil effects. When the class was 
tested by questions that traveled a very little way beyond the limits of the 
text-book which they were studying, or the lecture to which they had listened, 
there was far less readiness and intellectual self-reliance than there ought to 
have been. If the teachers did not teach quite so well the results would, I be- 
lieve, be better." 

I wish now to state, briefly as possible, some criticisms tliat 
the Public Schools, as well as some schools not public, are 
open to : 

1. I once asked a cultivated lawyer who had served as a teach- 
er, what he thought of the Public-school work of his city. He re- 
plied: "Things are too much hashed up." Any competent per- 
son who will take the pains to look through a school " Manual " 
will readily see what he meant: too many things on hand at once; 
insufficient time devoted to any subject to form the habit of 
attention ; the energies of the mind too much scattered. The 
mental facts conditioning training, whether to receive impres- 
sions or to make them, are well known. The mental energies 
flow in channels that, so to speak, have been dug out for them,, 
and these channels are dug by repeated action — blow on blow. 
What is more, the effect of the first blow in a given direction is 
soon effaced unless followed by a second and a third. Heuce 
the mind is cultivated, jDassively as well as actively, by contin- 
uous effort. Of course, effort must not be so protracted as to 



SOME FOEAIER CRITICISMS. 35 

exhaust the energy or cause it to flag ; but short of flagging, 
the longer the attention be given to any subject, otlier thing? 
being equal, the better. Hence the folly, especially in cases of 
children who have reached the age of 10, of breaking up the 
time into minute bits, or of giving one or two lessons a week in 
any study that is to be carried on seriously. How rapidly would 
a child train either mind or muscle to write, if it made but one 
stroke a week? or how rapidly a young lady to play on the piano, 
if she touched a key a month? An able scholar and teacher re- 
marked to me not long ago: "I discovered, when a boy, that it 
Avas not best to quit the churn-dasher just as the butter began 
to 'gather' — it always went back." 

3. The children are put at some of the studies much too 
young, and, as a matter of course, continue at them too long. 
Nothing is gained in time, and much is sure to be lost in the 
interest and thoroughness of the child. The folly of dragging a 
child five or six years through geography! I agree with my cor- 
respondent quoted above: ''Much better wait till the pui)il is 
ready for it, and then settle the thing at once," 

This point may be illustrated in this way: A course of study 
now lying before me introduces the pupil to geograjDhy at the 
beginning of the third year, that is, when he is eight years old 
if he has entered on reaching the minimum legal school age. 
No, he is not introduced to geography, but to what are called 
"Lessons Preparatory to Geography," These are thus described: 

" Location and direction of things in the school-room, of the neighboring 
streets, and public buildings; directions of some of the principal objects 
throughout the city. " 

The next term this "preparation" is continued, as follows: 

"The use of maps illustrated by maps of the school-room, school-yard, and 
the neighboring streets, drawn upon the blackboard by teacher and iDupil." 

The third term k, is the same as the second, only "directions 
are indicated by the map of — "(the city from whose "manual" 
I quote.) 

A year has now jjassed, and the pu|)il is "prepared" to study 
geography. His work is thus laid down by terms: 

(1) "Map of State of Ohio, to be taught with the aid of the blackboard. 
Productions of the State, and pursuits of the people. To Our Country, in 
Guyot's Elementary Geography." 

(2) "Guyot's Elementary Geography, ' Our Country,' with oral lessons on 



36 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

the map of the "World. The routes of travel to Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, 
Buffalo, and Cincinnati." 

(3) " Guyot's Elementary Geography, ' Other Countries,' with review of the 
book." 

He now enters the Grammar grades to find that he still has four 
years of geography before him: 

(4) " The Central States, commencing at Ohio and proceeding thence to con- 
tiguous States, with oral instruction upon subjects of Lessons from vii. to xi., 
Guyot's Intermediate Geography." 

(5) " The Middle Atlantic, New England, and South Atlantic States, and 
oral lessons upon the subjects of the first seven Lessons." 

(6) ''The United States completed, with review of definitions." 

(7) "The United States reviewed, North and South America. Geographical 
abbreviations. " 

(8) " Europe, Asia, and Africa. Geographical abbreviations. " 

(9) "Australia. The entire subject reviewed. Geographical abbreviations. " 

(10) "Review of the work assigned for the first term to class D; one lesson 
per week." 

(11) " Review of the work assigned to class D for the Second Term; one les- 
son per week." 

(12) " Review of the work assigned to class D for the Third Term; one lesson 
per week." 

(13) " Review of the work assigned to the C class for the first term; one les- 
son per week." 

(14) " Review of the work assigned to the C class for the Second Term; one 
lesson per week." 

(15) " Review of the United States; one lesson per week." 

The pupil leaves geography behind him as he enters the High 
School, having had instruction in it, part or all the time, for 
18 terms. I am bound to confess that I have never had experi- 
ence as a teacher in a city Graded School; also to bear witness 
that I have been told on excellent authority that I know noth- 
ing about public education in a city. Possibly this last is true; 
possibly, too, a state of things exists in our cities that makes it 
necessary to drizzle out geography to the children six years; but 
if so, then a city Public School is no place to send a child of 
fair wit to learn that branch of study. I undertake to say that 
a bright boy or girl, who is old enough to study geography, if 
well taught, can learn all the geography that he or she needs to 
know in two years, besides attending to other studies. 

Arithmetic is spun out to still greater length. The pupil 
begins with ''number" when he enters the lowest primary 
grade. At the end of the year, he has learned to add, subtract, 
multiply, and divide, "step by step to 10," and has learned to 



SOME FORMER CRITICISMS. 37 

coiTnt, ''with or without objects, to 50." He now grapples 
with "arithmetic," and continues to wrestle with it each year 
and each term till he leaves the grammar school, and then, if 
he takes any of the High-school courses except the classical, he 
has one term more in the High School, making 25 in all. Per- 
haps we ought to note his progress at intermediate jioints. His 
first work in the grammar school is long division and Federal 
money as far as division. The next term he comi^letes Fed- 
eral money and actually masters reduction to this extent: 
"addition, subtraction, and multiplication of dry and liquid 
measures, and avoirdupois weight." Two terms more enable 
him to finish reduction and compound numbers. With the 
seventh year, he enters on percentage and conquers interest to 
partial payments. The twenty-third term we read, " Book 
completed, with omissions prescribed by the Sui^erintendent." 
Then, after reviewing the entire subject, with "omission as 
above," he lays it aside until he comes to " Eay's Higher" in 
the High School. Six terms are given to United States History. 
If some bungling country teacher reading this pamphlet asks, 
"How can 25 terms be spent on arithmetic, and 18 on geogra- 
phy? perhaps these pi-ogrammes of daily school work in the same 
city will help him to an answer: 



9:00 to 9:05 Opening. 

9:05 to 9:25 Writing. 

9:25 to 10:10 Reading. 

10:10 to 10:40 Language. 

10:40 to 11:00 SpeUing. 

11:00 to 11: 15 Recess. 

11 : 15 to 12 : 00 Arithmetic 



PRIMARY. 

2: 00 to 2:15 Music. 

2: 15 to 2:30 Spelling. 

2: 30 to 2:45 Drawing. 

3: 45 to 3:00 Arithmetic. 

3:00to 3:20 Reading. 

3: 20 to 3:55 Geography. 



That is, the A primary i)upil carries on 8 different branches 
of study at once. If he entered at the minimum age, he is now 
10 years old. 



B GRAMMAR. 

9 : 05 to 10 : 00 Arithmetic. 

10:00 to 11:00 Grammar. 

11:00 to 11:15 Recess. 

11: 15 to 11:30 Geography. 

11: 30 to 12:00 Writing. 



2: 00 to 2:45 History. 

2:45 to 3:00 Music. 

3: 00 to 3:25 Spelling. 

3:25 to 3:55 Drawing. 

3:55 to 4:00 Arithmetic. 



This programme is varied a trifle Saturday afternoons, physics 
coming in the room of history, and reading in the room of draw- 



38 OUE COMMON SCHOOLS. 

ing. Here also are 8 branches of study for a pupil 12 years old. 
I do not take space to point out the pedagogic principles that 
these programmes violate. I undertake to say, that effective 
educational work cannot be done on such a plan. 

3 . Too many books are used in the same study. It is well- 
known that our school-books have all been written (or re-written) 
to adapt them to the A's, primary, etc., of the Graded School. 
The old-time step from the Alphabet to the English Header or 
Testament was too long, but there is no excuse (outside the in- 
terest of bookmakers and publishers) for six reiiders: four are 
enough, so are two arithmetics and two geographies. 

Dr. Samuel Elliot, the new Boston Superintendent, has just 
submitted his first semi-annual Eeport. According to the ex- 
tended editorial notice of Tlie New England Journal of Educa- 
tion (Sept, 12, '78), his discussion of defects and needs rests on 
a careful investigation of the subject, especially a personal 
inspection of the Schools of Boston. He lays great stress on two 
principles. "Treat children as children," and "teachers as 
teachers, not pupils." Dr. Elliot claims that the public education 
has been disregarding both principles for 20 years. He says : 

"Studies have been extended and methods multiplied, at serious hazard to 
teachers and pupils engaged in them. To fill, or to try to fill, a course too full, 
results in emptying rather than filling it. 

" The minds of those employed upon such work are necessarily treated as if 
they were physical, not intellectual, and so jammed and strained are they in 
most cases as to lose their elasticity, almost their vitality. Cramming never 
was, and never will be, educating. If educating is drawing out, cramming is 
driving in; if the one means bringing up or nurturing, the other means pressing 
down or stunting, — always the opposite. Cramming asks. How much i How 
soon ? Educating, How well ? How long ? Cramming cares nothing for teach- 
er or scholar, but only for the school or system. Educating makes everything 
of the teacher and scholar, and leaves the school (if it can be spoken of as a sepa- 
rate object) and the system very much to themselves, sure that they wDI be 
right if the teacher and scholar are." 

He makes the following recommendations: 

" ( 1) The dropping of many studies hitherto required in our schools. (2) The 
enlargement of the teacher's freedom by a partial release from the bondage of 
text-books. (3) The teaching of spelling, writing, reading, geography, and 
history, by natural rather than artificial "methods. (4) The reduction of writ- 
ten and oral examinations to a minimum of work for the sake of examiners and 
examined. (5) A change in the character of the questions, based on the pur- 
poses for which examinations are established. (6) The proper principle of pro- 
motion should be made a healthy and natural stimulus to mental growth. The 
dull pupils should not be too rapidly advanced, nor the active kept back when 



SOME FOKMER CRITICISMS. 30 

prepared to advance. (~) The exclusion of industrial education from our Pub- 
lic-school education, on grounds of public policy and economy. (8) The reduc- 
tion of school expenses by providing free text-books only in extreme cases." 

The summary is the JournaVs. 



IV. WOMEN" TEACHERS. 

The curious way in which Superiuteudent Kickoff dis- 
poses of this topic has ah-eady been remarked upon. ''The ar- 
gument urged on this point will have little weight, except on 
the supposed ground that there has been a deterioration in the 
work of elementary instruction" (p. 87). Apart from its bear- 
ing on this question, if any, I re-assert: "The masculine and 
feminine forces should be represented in their full power;" and 
"The substitution of women for men in the Public Schools has 
gone too far." There is force in the view urged by my corre- 
spondent above: " In constructing schools and managing them,- 
we should keep as near the family plan as possible. The father 
element must be there, as well as the mother element. We now 
eliminate the former, or mostly so, leaviug the pupil half-or- 
phaned." 

I have no doubt that the substitution of women for men has 
been a positive advantage in some respects. There are some 
kinds of school work for which they have a positive genius. 
They teach and manage yoinig children much better than men. 
But at the same time all of the first-class teachers in the higher 
grades that I have known have been men, with one exception. 
The late Almeda A. Booth was the only lady teacher that 
brought to the languages and mathematics a man's logical grip 
of the subject, his ability to impress minds, and his power to 
manage active and vigorous students. 

For these reasons, as well as for others soon to be mentioned, 
a man should be at the head of each large city school. Both 
the intellectual and moral health of the pupils demand him. If 
fit for his place, his influence will be powerfully felt in the mor- 
als and manners of the thousand or more pupils. That he is 
needed, is shown by the fact that, when he is dispensed with, 
part of his work has been handed over to a peregrinating Assist- 
ant-Superintendent — who, however, is worth little, compared 
with what he would be if on the ground all the time. An hon- 



40 OUR COMMON" SCHOOLS. 

ored member of the ISTorth-Eastern Ohio Teachers' Association 
once related to me this anecdote, of which he was the hero. 
A small boy, very full of mischief, went to school the first day 
of the terra. He came home at night, saying: "^The teacher is a 
woman; I shan't mind." He was expostulated with, but per- 
sisted in his threats of rebellion. The second night he came 
home saying, ''I will mind." He explained his change of heart 
in the remark, " There is a man in the other end of the school 
house." I can but think the anecdote points a moral. Then, 
few people have an adequate conception of the great wear and tear 
of both body and mind involved in the management of a great 
city school. To command a regiment in the field is hardly a 
greater drain on the mental and physical energies. What our 
best physicians think of a woman's ability to bear this great 
strain, any one can learn by asking them. Perhaps it is Avorth 
adding, I have no desire to close to women any field of profit- 
able employment to which they are equal. Woman's battle is 
hard enough at the best. But it is not unkindness to her to 
protest against her assuming duties for which she is unequal., 

Here I feel it to be a duty to protest against the way in which 
many of these teachers are worked. The demands in school 
hours are, perhaj^s, not excessive, but the out-of-school demands 
certainly are.* Examinations and reports are positive manias in 

* It must have been one of these overworked teachers, gifted with a sense of 
humor, that produced the following : 

'Twas Saturday night, and a teacher sat 

Alone, her task pursuing ; 
She averaged this and she averaged that 

Of all her class were doing. 
She reckoned percentage, so many boys, 

And so many girls all counted , 
And marked all the tardy and absentees. 

And to what all the absence amounted. 

Names and residence wrote in full, 

Over many columns and pages ; 
Yankee, Teutonic, African, Celt, 

And averaged all their ages, 
The date of admission of every one. 

And cases of flagellation. 
And prepared a list of the graduates 

For the coming examination. 



SOME FORMER CRITICISMS. 41 

our schools at the present time — especially written examina- 
tions. The oral examination tends to develope readiness and 
self-command on one's feet; the written examination, precision, 
clearness, fullness. Neither should be dispensed with. But 
the demands on the pupil and teacher in the way of examina- 
tion "j)apers" — the first to write, the second to read them — 
are beyond all reason. This state of things I hinted at in my 
former paper, where I set the teachers (p. 8), " from the pri- 
mary teacher up, by way of the principal, to the Superintend- 
ent of Public Instruction and his staff of assistants,'' in proces- 
sion, followed \>y the Kindergarten, normal, and training teach- 
ers, together with the music and drawing-masters, '' each one 

Her weary head sank low on her book, 

And her weary heart still lower, 
For some of her pupils had little brain. 

And she could not furnish more. 
She slept, she dreamed ; it seemed she died, 

And her spirit went to Hades, 
And they met her there with a question fail*, 

" State what the per cent, of your grade is." 

Ages had slowly rolled away. 

Leaving but partial traces. 
And the teacher's spirit walked one day 

In the old familiar places. 
A mound of fossilized school reports 

Attracted her observation, 
As high as the State House dome, and as wide 

As Boston since annexation. 

She came to the spot where they buried her bones. 

And the ground was well built over. 
But laborers digging threw out a skuU 

Once planted beneath the clover. 
A disciple of Galen wandering by. 

Paused to look at the diggers. 
And plucking the skull up, looked through the eye. 

And saw it was lined with figures. 

" Just as I thought," said the young M. D., 

" How easy it is to kill 'em — 
Statistics ossified every fold 

Of cerebrum and cerebellum: 
" It's a great curiosity, sure,'' said Pat, 

" By the bones can you tell the creature ? " 
" Oh, nothing strange," said the doctor, " that 

Was a nineteenth century teacher." 



43 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

having his bundle of reports under his arm and his sheet of per- 
centages in his hand." 

One thing more. The good of the general organization calls 
for plenty of vigorous men. For one man's ideas, however good 
they may be, to have exclusive course in the schools of a city is 
unwise, and may be ruinous. Now a male subordinate may try 
conclusions with the Superintendent, and thereby give versa- 
tility to the organization; a woman is more likely to hide her 
face in her apron and cry. 

V. EMPHASIS GIVEN TO MATERIAL APPARATUS. 

What little was said in '^Our Common-School Education" 
on this point does not appear to have attracted Mr. Rickoff's 
attention. But it is a point that I desire to press a little further. 

Fifty years ago, Carlyle ("Signs of the Times") deplored the 
latter-day reliance upon mechanisms to the exclusion of person- 
al force. He denied that science was born in great laboratories, 
or literature in great libraries. He asked: 

" Shall we say, for example, that science and art are indebted principally to 
the founders of schools and universities? Did not science originate rather, and 
gain advancement, in the obscure closets of the Roger Bacons, Keplers, New- 
tons; in the workshops of the Fausts and Watts; wherever and in what guise 
soever Nature, from the first times downward, had sent a gifted spirit upon the 
earth? Again, were Homer or Shakespeare members of any beneficial guild, 
or made poets by means of it? Were painting and sculpture created by fore- 
thought, brought into the world by institutions for that end? No; science and 
art have, from first to last, been the free gift of Nature; an unsolicited, unex- 
pected gift; often even a fatal one. These things rose up, as it were, by spon- 
taneous growth, in the free soil and sunshine of Nature. They were not planted 
or grafted, nor even greatly multiplied or improved by the culturing and 
manuring of institutions. Generally speaking, they have derived only partial 
help from these: often have suffered damage. They made constitutions for 
themselves. They originated in the dynamical nature of man, and not in his 
mechanical nature." 

It is impossible not to see that Carlyle's wail contains much 
truth. Certainly, mechanism is a marked feature of education 
in America; but not so much so in Grermany, where the most 
famous universities are found in very modest quarters. Mag- 
nificent buildings, extensive museums, and costly laboratories 
are unduly emj^hasized. Scliool liouses are thought worthy of a 
dedication, but who thinks of dedicating a teacher? In the 



SOME FORMER CRITICISMS. 43 

West, fine school buildings are often erected in the interest of 
land speculation; and I could name a university town, the 
suburb of a State Capital, where a 20,000 dollar school house 
has been erected in that sole interest, to accommodate 30 or 40 
pupils. Most of the rooms stand empty, filled with dust and 
cobwebs, waiting for the future to fill them with children. Then 
there are the show branches of study and the tendency to spec- 
tacular display. One of my correspondents, a well-known aca- 
demical teacher, touches the matter thus: 

" Beyond doubt our Public-school education is rapidly degenerating into a 
dumb show of mere tangible and material grandeur. As the material aspect 
increases in attractiveness, it seems that the immaterial and essential aspect or 
element degenerates. This is not a necessary result, but is one that must inev- 
itably result from the false motives that are brought to bear on both teachers 
and pupils. Witness the foolish desire to make an exhibition of education, just 
as though a material and tangible entity. The works of art may be exhibited, 
and to this extent it may enable one to judge of the taste and culture of the 
people; but this is not the intangible and spiritual entity called education." 

Mr. EickofE quotes two passages from General Garfield on the 
history of education. Why did he not qaote this from a recent 
speech of the General's : "The great case of brains versus 
brick and mortar, has been called for a hearing. The two great 
defects of the modern system of school education are the culti- 
vation of building to the detriment of brains, and the over- 
crowding of the pupils with numerous studies"? 



PART THIRD. 



SOME NEW CRITICISMS OF THE NEW SCHOOLS. 

I intend now to discuss some topics that were not noticed in 
Our Common-School Education." 



I. THE HIGH SCHOOL. 

Before, I was careful to say: "T strike no blow at the higher 
grades." and here repeat the remark; but there are some aspects 
of the High-school question that should be freely discussed. 

The Cleveland Herald of April 29, 1878, contained a letter of 
mine in which I said State Education in the United States has 
always been defended on the ground that the State may educate 
in self-defense. This I called the "old American doctrine," 
and asked whether the doctrine includes the High School of 
to-day, or whether to defend that institution we must seek 
another ground. The communication closed with these sen- 
tences: 

" But I have heard and read a good deal of wild, vaporing talk on the High- 
school question, and it seems to me time to come to fundamental principles. 
On what ground is the publicist, the statesman, or the educator to defend the 
High School? While the public is so much interested in educational questions, 
I respectfully call on the ardent champions of the High School of to-day to 
buckle down to the argument and answer the important questions just pro- 
pounded. Especially let them tell us whether the principle on which they 
ground the High School also includes the widest education of which man is 
capable. Must the State, to be consistent, also furnish free Colleges and Univer- 
sities, free literature and art-training, a free drama and opera, and a free trip 
to Europe? Is the High School, with its extended course, to be continued be- 
cause it is a ' good thing ; ' because ,it is a ' head ' to the system, or because it 
is the 'p5or-man's' College? It seems to me high time the discussion should be 
centered on some principle. Let us have the High-school theory formulated. 
My purpose is accomplished now that I have analyzed the elements entering 
into the problem." 



SOME NEW CRITICISMS. 45 

Mr. Henkle (in his Monthly for Juue) gives a summary of this 
letter, and says it is plain to be seen where I stand. He ex- 
pressly declines to enter into the merits of the question, thinks 
we can get along without the formula, and declares that ^'gov- 
ernments do what they please provided their acts are indorsed 
by the people." I am well aware, as he says, that " the people 
neither think nor act according to formulas," but I certainly 
thought it fair to assume that scliolars and educators of Mr. 
Henkle's prominence had a body of educational doctrine that 
would bear statement. I hope he does not mean to tell us that 
there is no philosophy of the State, that politics is a piece of 
empiricism, and that there are no metes and bounds .to the 
sphere of government. But at last he thinks better of it, and 
says Locke's formula will answer: "The end of government is 
the good of mankind." No one, from the head of the Flowery 
Kingdom up or down, is likely to object to that; certainly I 
shall not. But I would like to ask Mr. Henkle, whether, if he 
were editing a religious newspaper in a community noted for 
:Sabbath-breaking, and the question, "Is it right for boys to 
go hunting and fishing, and for men to kill hogs on Sunday?" 
were up, he would be content to answer, "The Sabbath was 
made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." 

But I am not opposed to a High School, though skeptical 
..about the one now existing. I would have a High School as 
good as the existing one so far as the English, mathematical, 
and scientific studies are concerned, but am doubtful about the 
•rest. I wish it could be ascertained, for example, to how many 
-of the pupils receiving instruction in language other than Eng- 
lish such instruction is of real value; also, how large a propor- 
tion of them might better be studying something else. I know 
that many of them are throwing away their time. The Latin 
taught in the majority of High Schools is of little value, unless 
followed up by later instruction in the same language. What is 
more, this later instruction the great majority of them never 
get. Speaking generally, the only places where they can get it 
:are the Colleges, and few of the High-school graduates go to 
College. The assumption that the High Schools are large 
feeders of the Colleges (in Ohio at least) is not true. I shall 
tfirst show that this is a fact, then try to explain it : 



46 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

1. Prof. C, K. Adams, of Ann Arbor ("Higher Education 
and the State," Xeio Englander for May, '78, p. 303,) says: 

"The number of youth seeking a collegiate education * * * has been 
growing less and less during the last 40 years. It is a fact as true as it is 
alarming that an increasing number of our most intelligent and enterprising 
young men think it scarcely worth the while to lose four years in College." 

Prof. Adams bases this statement on the well-known statistics 
of Dr. Barnard, of Columbia College. In 1840 the students in 
College stood to the whole population as 1 : 1,549; in 1860 as 
1 : 2,012; in 1870 as 1 : 2,546. In New England the ratios are: 
1826, 1 : 1,513; 1855, 1 : 1,689; 1870, 1 : 1,927. No doubt 
a number of causes have conspired to reduce in this surprising 
Avay the relative attendance at College. It is noteworthy that 
the falling off should be contemporaneous with the enormous 
expansion of the Public Schools; I have no doubt that ex- 
pansion is one of the causes. 

2. Dr. Tappan, of Kenyon College — who has paid particular 
attention to the relation of High Schools to Colleges — in an 
address at Put-in Bay, 1875, ('•'Proceedings,'^ etc., p. 16,) 
stated : 

"After this matter was submitted to me, I sent out to the Superintendents 
and Presidents of Colleges two circulars. To those gentlemen who answered I 
owe my thanks. I received answers from more than half the Superintendents 
and nearly half the Presidents of Colleges. The result I must approximate. 
The number of students prepared in the High Schools of Ohio for the Colleges 
of Ohio, for a full College course, is less than 50 per annum. Certainly it 
amounts to so little that it is not worth counting." 

And in a note to his address, as published, he says the three 
years preceding 46 High Schools prejiared 559 students for 
College, of whom 178 were prepared to take a full classical 
course. Of the 559, 146 were to enter Ohio Colleges; and of 
the 178, 91. The same three years 11 Colleges, including nearly 
all the principal ones in the State, received from High Schools 
54 students, of whom 28 were prejDared for a full classical 
course. Dr. Tappan adds: " Evidently many who were to enter 
did. not. Instead of less than 50, I might have said about a 
dozen yearly." Of course some graduates go to other than 
Ohio Colleges; but it is evident that, in justifying our High 
Schools, it is hardly worth while to mention them as prepara- 
tory schools for Colleges. 



SOME NEW CRITICISMS. 47' 

3. The leading Sonthern States, even in their poverty, send- 
more of their wliite children to the higher institutions of learn- 
ing than the leading Northern States. Of course, they have 
not yet learned to take equal care of their black children. 
March, 1872, the Bureau of Education sent out a circular, con- 
taining some valuable statistics, prejsared by Mr. Charles War- 
ren, showing the distribution of College students in '70-1 — said 
statistics being based on 184 College catalogues. One of the 
tables gives the number of Collegiate students from each State 
in the Colleges of the different States, and also the "total Col- 
legiate students." From this table and the census of 1870 we 
can make out the ratios of students to population. Georgia 
surpasses Illinois, Kentucky Ohio, and Virginia Massachusetts. 
The Northern States of the original 13 have 7,051 students in 
College in an aggregate population of 11,341,269, or 1: 1,6085 
the 6 Southern, 2,239 in a white population of 3,026,807, or 1 : 
1,352. Virginia was far in advance of all the other States in 
the relative number of her children attending her own Colleges. 

At first view, this exhibit is surprising. No one will deny 
that the meagreness of the Southern school system explains why 
so large a number of Southern youth are in the higher institu- 
tions. Let not the point of the argument be missed. I do not 
say the South is better off educationally than the North, or as 
well off; nor that the Southern Colleges are equal to Northern* 
my proposition is, that the Colleges are not most patronized where 
the Public Schools are the most powerful — but the reverse. 
Nor should I fail to observe that the "West Point candidates do 
best where most pupils, relatively, are found in schools other 
than the Public Schools. These statistics, as well as the 
former ones, crush Mr. Eickoff's private school and "so-called 
College" theory of the West Point failures to powder. 

These facts furnish food for reflection. No one cause ac- 
counts for them; several things must be considered. I do not 
claim the ability to discover and measure all the elements in 
the complex problem, but the High School is certainly an ele- 
ment and a large one. 

I have no reason to think that Public-school teachers are op- 
posed to the higher learning; and, perhaps, none to think that 
they are indifferent. But I have no difficulty in detecting these 



48 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

elements: (1) Public-schoolteachers, like other teachers, mag- 
nify their office. There is an observable disposition among them 
to make their system complete in itself, without reference to 
anything beyond it. Their state of mind is not so much opposi- 
tion to, as forgetfulness of, the College. (2) High-school teachers 
like, naturally, to have their best pupils remain with them, and 
they discourage their leaving before graduation. (3) The course 
takes so long a time that, Avhen finished, many pupils say, "We can 
not afford the time to go to College." (4) Other pupils reason, 
"The High School will do about as well; a diploma is a diploma." 
(5) Parents reason, "The Public Schools cost us so much that 
we must make them answer our turn. " (6) The glorification of 
the Public Schools, not as schools of elementary training merely, 
but as "the people's colleges," begets in many quarters the 
feeling that Colleges proper are unnecessary. Then (7) I must 
add, that the common High-school course is not such a prepa- 
ration as the College student needs. He has a smattering of sev- 
eral studies that he must go over again, for no self-respecting 
College can take, for example, the Philosophy and Logic of the 
High School for College work in the same branches. Sending a 
boy through the High School and then through College is to 
make a harness for a pony and then enlarge it so that it will fit a 
horse. This objection, however, is not so strong against the 
High-school course intended to prepare pupils for College, the 
so-called classical course. 

On the whole, the common High-school atmosphere is not 
charged with much College aspiration. A given boy growing up 
in a country or village school is more likely to complete a College 
course than the same boy carried up through the A's and B's of 
a city school. I do not hold the A's and B's wholly responsible 
for this, however. 

There is no doubt in my mind that, the country over, the 
High-school affects the College unfavorably. In Michigan, 
where a powerful University is the head of the State schools, 
and where most of the High Schools are manned by University 
men, it may be otherwise; but such is the fact in most of the 
States. Of course it may be said: "These schools do a good 
work, separate and apart from sending pupils to College; the in- 
terests of education do not suffer even if the Colleges do." The 
question, " How far the High-school work is a compensation for 



SOME XEW (IIITICISMS. 4!j 

the other loss " is a fair one. I am not aware that it has been 
discussed, and I shall not discuss it here. How the American 
High School atTects American culture as a whole, is an inviting 
topic. Perhaps it will be found to raise the general level — to in- 
crease the number of fairly educated men — and to reduce the 
number of thorough scholars. That conclusion would be in 
harmony with this general fact of American Society— it tends 
to a uniform level. 

"Democracy, they say, 
Rounds the sharp knobs of character away." 

Whether that conclusion can be sustained or not, it is idle to 
contend that in Ohio the High School is an important trib- 
utary of the College. It is not so much a tributary as a separate 
and independent stream flowing in the same general direction, 
but not going so far. But whatever may be the effect of our 
High Schools upon the higher education, there is no room to 
dowbt that, of late, they have received attention that should 
have been given to the lower grades. Dr. Dimmock was cer- 
tainly right in his principle, however he may have been with his 
figures, when he wrote: 

" It may be said without danger of contradiction, that in no State in the 
Union is the number of those pursuing any branch that by courtesy might be 
styled a part of higher education, greater than five percent, of those at school. 
The High and Normal Schools, the Academies and Colleges, may give us the 
officers for our educational army, but the officers exist for the army, not the 
army for the officers. All who are interested in public education should start 
with this postulate : The great object to be considered, is the best education 
that can be given in our common schools to the 95 per cent, of the children 
who will never be able or willing to advance beyond them." 

The adjustment to each other of the different grades of the 
Public School involves a difficulty almost insuperable. Dr. 
Dale, already quoted, states it thus (p. 125): 

" There is another and far graver defect in the organization of American 
schools. The theory of the system is very simple. Let there be a hierarchy of 
schools, primary, grammar, high ; let the course of instruction be so arranged 
that the highest class in the primary shall be a grade below the lowest in the 
grammar, and the highest in the grammar a grade below the lowest in the 
high; and let the 'graduating' class in the high schools be a grade below the 
junior classes in the colleges and universities. On paper this scheme is admi- 
rable. It looks like the fulfillment of those enthusiastic educationalists among 
ourselves who insist that when a child enters an infant school he should have 
his foot on the lowest rung of a ladder by which he may ascend to a fellowship 
at Trinity or Balliol. But the whole scheme of education for boys over 10 

4 



50 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

years of age, who are to go to a university, ought to be different from that 
which is intended for those who are to leave school at lA or 15. Boys destined 
for the university should begin some subjects at 11 or 12 which it would be 
waste of time for them to touch if their education had to close in the course 
of two or three years. On the other hand, boys who are to go into business as 
soon as their education is finished, should be taught some things, in a popular 
and unscientific way, which boys who are going to the university must be 
taught more thoroughly. The ' primary ' instruction of both sets of children 
may be carried on together; but from the time that they are 10 or 11 a special 
training is necessary for those who are to enjoy the advantages of a univer- 
sity." 

II. BOARDS OF EDUCATION. 

The organization of legal machinery for schools has attracted 
a good deal of attention of late. The district system and the 
town system have both been discussed. It is very properly said 
to be absurd to have in Ohio 40,000 scliool officers to look after 
schools that require only one third that number of teachers. 
All these topics I pass by, to offer some remarks on town and 
city Boards of Education. 

A glance suffices to show any man that the duties of such a 
Board are important. The Centennial year the scliool property 
of Cleveland was estimated at a little less than $1,500,000, and 
the school expenditure for the year was more than 1410,000. I 
name Cleveland only because the figures are at hand; the reader 
can form his own estimates as to the corresponding figures in 
other cities. Here is a financial responsibility equal to that of a 
State legislature but a few years ago. Then, far transcend- 
ing this function, is the educational responsibility. Not only 
does the Board control this great financial interest, but it has 
the sole power over the schools where thousands of children are 
receiving their training. It selects school sites, builds buildings, 
buys apparatus and furniture, lays and appropriates taxes; and 
also chooses school-books, ordains courses of study, enacts disci- 
pline, elects and dismisses superintendents and teachers. For 
school purposes, such a Board is a legislature, executive, and 
judiciary in one. It is apparent that, to the ability and char- 
acter of a legislature, it should add a mastery of the educational 
function. Its members should add scholarship to ability and ex- 
perience, and character to these. Let us look at its common 
make-up. 



SOME NEW CRITICISMS. 51 

The Cleveland Board contains 18 members, the Cincinnati 
Board 50, the Boston Board now only 24, but a few years ago 
118. Almost always these men are elected on a party ticket in 
their several districts or wards. A Republican ward is repre- 
sented by a Repuldican, a Democratic ward by a Democrat. 
Sometimes the nominations are controlled by fitness alone, but 
quite as often by politics alone; sometimes both elements are 
taken into account. As a political office, a seat in the Board of 
Education ranks next to a seat in the City Council, and is an 
object of ambition to the ward politicians. Hence, in making 
up the ward ticket, the politicians dispose of both seats on the 
same principle; they consider a man's "claims," and also his 
ability to "work'' for the ticket in the canvass and at election; 
or, sometimes, if a man fails to get the Council nomination, he 
falls back on the Board as the next best thing. Any man who 
has a general knowledge of city affairs can see what kind of 
men are likely to get upon the Board. What is more, the kind 
that are likely to get there do get there. 

After election the Board meet and organize. Two or three 
are probably excellent men; a larger number are passable; and 
after that we had better not continue description. Once organ- 
ized, they meet once in two weeks, of an evening, to manage the 
schools of 100,000 or 500,000 people. One comes to the meeting 
from his saloon, a second from his store, a third from his livery- 
stable, a fourth from his law-office, a fifth from his drug-shop, 
and so on. A majority of them may be very worthy men in their 
places, but here they are out of their places. Of the various 
Boards and Commissions that meet to do a city's business, not one 
is less competent than the School Board. I once asked a Cincin- 
natian, thoroughly familiar with the matter, how many of the 
Cincinnati Board were competent men. He said " five," but 
soon added, "ten will do." The Cleveland Herald, of February 
25th last, declared: "As it is, the names of more than one-half 
the men whose votes dispose of about $500,000 are not recorded 
on the tax-books of the wards they represent." This fact 
shows that, for the most part, the Board is made up of men 
who seek the Board, and its bearing on the fiscal side of public 
education is apparent. For the citizens of a city to select, as 
custodians of the city property, and to tax their own, men who 



52 OUK COMMON SCHOOLS. 

own no property, is sufficiently absurd; but, considered as a 
body of men who are to control public education, the members 
make an appearance even more ludicrous. Few of them are 
men of fair education, or of scholarly tastes; and still fewer are 
they who, from reading, observation, and thought have any 
adequate ideas either of what public education should bo, or 
how the schools should be organized to secure it. One of two 
things must happen : If a majority of the members are 
''bumi^tious" and magnify their office, they undertake "to 
run things " themselves; but if they have sense enough to dis- 
cover their own incompetency, they are apt to become a nodding 
committee to the Superintendent and his principal assistants. 
It remains to mention some of the evils that flow from such a 
state of affairs. 

Having an unchecked power of taxation up to a given point, 
a School Board only a minority of whose members pay taxes, is 
apt to indulge in "architecture." Certainly it will, if the 
members have a love of vulgar display, and are anxious to leave 
some '"monuments" behind them. Of course, its pranks m 
the proper Held of education are even more fantastic. The 
teachers are put in a false position. If they become the virtual 
Board, they are called "a ring," as they are very apt to be. 
They become politicians in the whole field of school affairs. 
Sometimes they "look after the wards," but more fre(juently 
they become manipulators of the Board, or of particular mem- 
bers. The facts already mentioned, together with the habit of 
electing teachers for one year only, often leads the teachers to 
degrade themselves in "looking after" their places. IIow far 
down these forces sonietimes reach is shown by this extract from 
The Natio7i (No. 517): 

" The extent to which 'pressure ' of all kinds is brought to bear upon these 
poor creatures is almost incredible; but when we reflect that in many large 
cities it is necessai-y for applicants for school positions to 'see' active politicians 
of the lowest stamp to secure their places, we can easily guess how such may be 
wrung out of them by judicious squeezing. We have ourselves known of a 
case in which a well-qualifled teacher, of Boston, trying to get a particular 
position, found himself obliged, in his search for one of the body having the 
appointing power, to go to a low bar-shop owned by him, and there state his 
case to the bar-tender, one of the 'workers' for the absent statesman, who, 
after listening with great suavity to the statement of the applicant, made this 
reply : ' Say no more. Tom Finnigan's got to do what I say ; you'l 1 have the 
place' — a prediction, we believe, not at all verified by the event. It is easy to 



SOME NEW CRITICISMS. 53 

say, ' How shocking to go to a low bar-room and ask for a position as a school- 
teacher!' It is certainly a shocking illustration of the influence of politics on 
the schools; but, politics being as they are, of course places in the schools must 
in some cases be got by going the rounds of the grog-shops The practical 
man, bent on making his way, who goes and interviews Tom's factotum, will 
get the start of the shrinking man who stays away, and in the struggle for exist- 
ence the practice of interviewing Tom's factotum comes very Eoon into vogue." 

This we may believe to be an extreme case. Not to follow 
the subject furtlier, it is clear that substantial improvement of 
city schools cannot be expected until the Boards are reorganized. 
The size of the Boards must be reduced; better men must be 
put iuto them; the term of office must be lengthened; and the 
members muse give much more time and attention to their duties. 
One of the first things done by such a Board will be to adopt 
this rule: 

" All teachers and other employes of this Board shall hold 
their places during good behavior." 

Here I may add that Mr. Watterson, late President of the 
Cleveland Board, some time ago made a most sensible suggestion 
on this subject. As reported in the Herald, " He was in favor of 
a Board with five or seven members, elected from the city at 
large. The Council should levy school taxes, and should pass 
upon all bills of the Board." I will add, too, that, since this 
section was written, I have come \ipon this description of the 
Boston Board prior to 1875— said description being the work 
of the Board elected under the law of that year ("Eeport," 1876, 
p. 43): 

" Some among them had never given any thought to the subject upon which 
they were called to legislate, and others had just that amount of knowledge 
which is a 'dangerous thing.' The rest formed a small nucleus of men well 
qualified for their position, though not always able to fill it to their own satis- 
faction, as their wisest measures were submitted to the decision of a controlling 
majority. In one particular, however, all the members labored under an equal 
disadvantage— namely, a want of time to attend to their assigned duties, how- 
ever willingly they would have performed them." 

The 25 certainly spoke of the 118 with surprising frankness, 
as well as truth ! 



54 OUR COMMON" SCHOOLS. 

III. THE SCHOOL-BOOK ABUSE. 

This consists, first, in the excessive prices of common school- 
books, and, second, in the frequent changes of books. I do not 
know that the profits of school-book publishing, as the business 
is carried on, are excessive; but the business is carried on in the 
manner most expensive, both to the publisher and to the public, 
as I shall show. 

I feel curious to know two things: (1) The total amount of 
money invested in school-books by the people of Ohio; (2) The 
amount lost each year by unnecessary changes. Unfortunately, 
we have no statistics on either point; if we had, they would show 
aggregates that would quite surprise the public. Writing text- 
books is, perhaps, the most striking form of literary activity 
among us, and their manufacture and sale are important branch- 
es of industry and trade. And all these are legitimate and hon- 
orable lines of business, although closely connected with one of 
the serious abuses of public education. 

Frequent changes of books are an evil in two ways: They in- 
volve a large pecuniary loss, often to people who can ill afford 
to bear it; they involve a direct educational loss to both pupil 
and teacher. For both reasons, change as change is bad. For 
both reasons, changes should not be made save for substantial 
reasons. In the majority of families, books are handed down 
from the older to the younger children; so that the loss does not 
end with those in whose hands the books are when the change is 
made. Then, when teachers and pupils have become accustomed 
to a given book, its methods and processes, they will work more 
efficiently with it than with a new one. As I have said before, 
education consists in digging out channels for the mental ener- 
gies to flow in. Education is the fixing of habits of thought 
and action. Hence, it must be a matter of routine to a great de- 
gree. When we condemn routine, the word is always used in a 
relative sense. Hence, continuity of method — whicli involves 
continuity of books and of teachers — is an indispensible part of 
education. Sometimes the introduction of a new book, even if 
no better than the old one, is stimulating to the pupil, and 
especially to the teacher, and this may justify change. 

Then the manner in which changes are often made is exceed- 
ingly reprehensible. The leading book-publishing houses are 



SOME NEW CKITICISMS. 



55 



represented, as they have a perfect right to be, by a class of com- 
mercial travellers known as "book-agents." These men are 
generally very pleasant gentlemen, and as a class do not, proba- 
bly, fall below the common level of commercial morality. But 
they understand their business, and ihey work at it. And then- 
business is, first, to "•introduce" as many of ''our house's^" 
books into the schools as possible, and then to keep them in. To 
secure these ends it becomes necessary for them to know ail the 
teachers in their respective "territory." at least all the leading 
ones, and to be on terms with them; also to know as mauy mem- 
bers of the boards as possible; and such other "influential" 
persons as may be serviceable. Many houses do not countenance 
dishonorable methods in their agents, and many agents will not 
descend to them; but knowing what we do about school-boards 
in cities, their relations to politics and all, we should be pre- 
pared to believe that clianges in school-books are often brought 
ahout by the agencies that play so important a part in city 
politics.^ And such is the fact. It is surprising how many men 
must be "seen," sometimes, how much "things must be fixed," 
how much "influence" must be used, to secure abetter text- 
book for our children! I do not care to descend to particulars. 
Suffice it to say, book campaigns are laid out long beforehand; 
their development covers months; and they cost huudreds, some- 
times thousands, of dollars. If some book-houses would only 
publish how much they expend yearly through agents, and for 
what, I should not need to say anything more on the subject. 
Sometimes houses and agents "look after" the election of mem- 
bers of the Board, but more frequently of teachers and super- 
intendents. In short, one of the most powerful forces in the 
field of school manipulation to-day, is the publishing interest. 
If boards and teachers are the two estates of our educational 
realm, then the book-agents are the third estate. I do not wish 
to cast any aspersion on my fellow-teachers. No facts m my 
possession show that any of them are corrupt: but there are 
facts in my possession showing that some of them stand in rela- 
tions to the publishing interest that men of the highest sense of 
honor would not occupy, and that their constituents, if they 
kncAv it, would not approve. A teacher in the Public Schools 
has no more right to be "under obligations" to a publisher or 



56 OUR COMMON" SCHOOLS. 

his agent than a Congressman had to stand in the same relation 
to Oakes Ames, when that worthy was putting things Avhere 
they would do "most good." A good deal of close observation 
has taught me that our school - master morality needs some 
toning up. 

The Ohio School Law, revised in 1875, contains this provision 
(Sec. 52): 

" Each Board of Education shall determine the studies to be pursued, and the 
text-books to be used in the schools under their control, and no text-book shall 
be changed within three years after its adoption without the consent of three- 
fourths of the members of the Board of Education given at a regular meeting." 

In no place, that I am aware of, does the law impose any 
duties on teachers in connection with selecting books or pre- 
paring courses of study. This seems to be a singular omission. 
It is well known that College faculties make their own courses 
(practically, however it may be theoretically), and choose their 
own books, and it is eminently fit that they should do so. There 
are obvious reasons why country teachers cannot choose studies or 
books. There are also obvious reasons why city teachers cannot 
do so as well as a faculty; but the Superintendent and his leading- 
assistants ought to be recognized in these things as now they are 
not. It is hard to believe that they are not more competent to 
do the business than a Board of Education. Nor would r.hey be 
apt to abuse their power, since they would be responsible both 
to the Board and to the public. I Avould not favor putting full 
power into their hands, but certainly they should have some- 
thing more than the indirect advisory relations to these import- 
ant matters that they have now. At present it is sometimes 
difficult to get even an opinion, for the teacher does not always 
like, in a "war," to take ground against either of the agents 
who are marshalling the forces. But in the absence of power 
and responsibility on the part of teachers, such a Board as that 
described at the close of the last section would sweep away the 
present abuse. I take leave of the subject with saying, I have 
no confidence in the State's undertaking to carry on the pul)- 
lishing business, as some advocate, cr to regulate it further than 
to provide for intelligent and responsible agents who shall 
choose from the books puldished by private enterprise. 



SOME NEW CRITICISMS. 57 



IV. COST OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



In 1855 the total school expenditure in Ohio was $1,880,789. 
Increasing slowly year by year, save '62 and '63, in 1865 it 
reached $3,298,5 13. The four years following it grew a million 
a year, reaching $7,150,006 in 1870. For '71 and '72 it fell a 
little below 7,000,000, and then, recovering, it passed 8,000,000. 
The highest point it has reached is $8,462,757.51, in 1870. 
The same year the State raised by taxation, fo]- all pur- 
poses, $28,521,256.52; so that 30 per cent, of tiie whole State 
expenditure was for public education, surpassi::g the boast of 
the Colonial Governor of Connecticut: " One-fourth the annual 
revenue of the Colony is laid out in maintaining free schools." 
These statistics make two impressions upon the mind — -first, by 
their 'greatness; second, by their rapid increase. The increase is 
considerably more than 400 per cent, in 20 years. Mr. Rickoff 
says (p. 51) that this "surprising increase of expenditure * * 
is a practical result of the almost fatal lesson which was taught 
us by the civil war — that the Common School is the only guar- 
antee of political or personal freedom." This is a large element 
in the increase, no doubt. The depreciation of our paper cur- 
rency is another one, both direct and indirect — direct, because 
more money was now necessary; indirect, by fostering reckless 
■outlays. And this is the third element — the "fatal lesson" of 
■of public and private extravagance taught us by "the civil 
war." The prodigality engendered by that great contest we 
shall not recover from in a generation, if ever. As it is, our 
governments are probably the most expensive in the world. 
Nor have the Public Schools been marked by more prudence 
and economy than other branches of public administration. In 
such towns as Aurora and Bainbridgc (mentioned below), for 
example, not to hunt up the "jobs" in the cities, there are 
no public moneys that are expended with so little judgment 
or with such meagre results. And such is tlie case in great de- 
gree the whole State over. 

Now, the people of Ohio had better pay these enormous sums 
for what they get than to get nothing. But either they should 
get much more for their money, or they should get what they do 
at a smaller price. I advocate no parsimonious policy; the Public 



58 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

Schools should be well supported. If any man has construed 
my former paper to mean illiberality toward the schools, I wish 
to undeceive him. But there are special reasons why the mana- 
gers of the Public Schools, both Boards and teachers, should 
strive to give the people the full worth of their money, and also 
to foster economy. Prodigality at the fountain-head of the 
public education is the most dangerous. Besides, these mana- 
gers should know where, when the time for retrenchment comes, 
it generally begins, and where it generally goes farthest. A 
niggardly policy follows a prodigal one. I know some villages 
where instruction will be starved for years to come, because the 
people, in their vanity, built a costly scliool-house. One of the 
most distinguished of living Americans writes me: 

" Taxes on real property — farms and homesteads— have gradually grown so 
that the property is nearly confiscated in the United States. The cost of main- 
tenance of the Public Schools has kept pace, and school taxes in some places 
equal one per cent , or nearly 25 per cent of income. In Europe this would create 
revolution. Here in time it will cause trouble. So I advise those interested ia 
the Public-School system to begin to prepare for the inevitable." 

In a second letter he touches the point again: 

" Local taxes here are, I believe, 3)^ per cent, on a full valuation, viz: quite 
as much as property could be sold for; and I doubt if anybody with a mixed 
list of improved and unimproved property can collect enough rents to pay 
taxes, insurance, repairs, etc ; so that it amounts to confiscation. The same is 
the case in St. Louis, and I hear that it is equally so in Cincmnati, Columbus 
and Cleveland. I favor the Common-School education, but doubt the wisdom 
of such extravagant buildings as are now the fashion, unless paid for by casf), 
instead of by bonds payable in the future, with annual interest. I also doubt 
the wisdom of pushing the Common-School education into the higher branches 
of the classics— music, drawing, etc. ; and would not object to seeing added, in 
lieu thereof, a compulsory trade of shoe-making, harness-making, tailoring, 
and carpentering — something that would enable a boy at once to earn his living. 
We are training too many of the athletic youths of the country to clerkships 
and professions; more than exists employment for." 



V. THE (COUNTRY SCHOOL. 

City teachers, generally prompt to appreciate the city schools,, 
are among the first to charge inefficiency on the country schools. 
Mr. Alston Ellis, of Hamilton, Ohio, one of our best-known 
superintendents, says, in his interesting sketch of ungraded 
schools ("Education in Ohio, 1876," p. 105): 



SOME NEW CRITICISMS. 59 

"Were it not that our graded schools are showing such excellent work, the 
results of instruction in ungraded schools might not appear so meagre and 
and unsatisfactory." 

Again (p. 101): 

"Educators and friends of education do not point to our ungraded schools 
when they wish to show the best fruitage of our Common-School system. The 
cities are altogether relied upon to sustain the credit of the State in all educa- 
tional expositions. " 

Prom Mr. Ellis's point of view, this is all true and just. 
Country schools are not manao-ed on the liierarchal plan; they 
are far from imposing in appearance, and are poorly prepared to 
produce "jiapers," or compete in an ''exposition" of educa- 
tion. However, there are some compensations. An ambitious 
pupil of good ability, if he can find a good teacher, will make 
better headway in a country than in a city school. A well- 
known Ohio professor writes me: "Prof. [naming the 

instructor in the institution who looks after the English 
studies] says that boys who come from the country schools are 
far better up in English reading, etc., than those he gets from 
the city.'' Upon the whole, the all-system of the city is better 
than the no-system of the country. One has too little of what 
the other has too much; and efforts to reform the two kinds of 
schools must take very different and almost opposite directions. 

The country schools differ greatly in quality: some are good, 
some are indifferent, some bad, worthless, or worse; but, on the 
whole, tliey stand greatly in need of improvement. Nor are 
they equal, in many localities, to former days. The time was 
when, all over the Western Reserve, the district schools were 
full. An Academy at the " Center" constantly stimulated the 
ambition of the better pupils in the districts, and furnished 
many of the districts with teachers. A majority of the most 
enterprising young men, on tlieir way to the professions, passed 
through the schools as teachers. I am reluctant to believe that 
the former days yere better than these; but I cannot resist the 
conviction that hundreds of schools are inferior, both in pupils 
and in teachers, to those of 20 years ago. I shall discuss only 
one leading element in the problem, but one all too little 
noticed. 

Since 1850 as many as 18 Ohio counties have fallen off in 
population. Here they are, with the figures: 



60 OUE COMMON SCHOOLS. 

1S50. 1870. 

Ashland 23,813 21,933 

Carroll 17,685 14,491 

Coshocton 25,674 23,600 

Geauga 17,837 14,190 

Guernsey 30,438 23,838 

Harrison 20,157 18,682 

Holmes 20,452 18,177 

Knox 28,873 26,833 

Licking 38,846 35,756 

Medina 24,441 20,093 

Monroe 38,351 25,779 

Morgan 38,585 30,363 

Morrow 20,380 18,583 

Muskingum 45,049 44,886 

Perry 20,775 18,453 

Noble 20,751* 19,946 

Preble 21,820* 21,809 

Seneca 30,868* 30,827 

Warren 26,902* 26,689 



-I860. 

It will be seen tluit the loss in the 18 counties is 47,159; and 
it is worth remarking that many other counties have been kept 
from a like fate only by having growing towns in their borders. 
The abandoned houses, solitary chimneys, cellar-walls overgrown 
by weeds, scattered over the country, show what has been going 
on, as well as the Census. I know of one farm in Portage 
County, of moderate size, on which there are 7 abandoned wells. 
It is impossible to resist the conclusion that, in many parts of 
Ohio, the population is declining, both in quantity and quality. 
The same is true of other States. Besides, families grow small 
in size even more rapidly than they grow few in number. In 
1850, Bainbridge, Geauga County, had a population of 1,014; 
in 1870, of 66(). In 1845, the town enumerated 480 persons of 
legal school age; in 1876, onlv 104. In 1840, Aurora, Portage 
County, bad a population of 906; in 1870, of 642. The school 
enumeration fell from 424 in '40 to 191 in '76. And these towns 
stand for hundreds of similar ones. 

The bearing of these statistics on industrial, intellectual, and 
social life, are as important as they are obvious. I shall do no 
more than point out their bearing on the country-school prob- 
lem. Here I give the school statistics of Aurora for 1876, 
remarking that my numbers do not correspond to those by 
which the districts are known: 



SOME NEW CRITICISMS. 



61 



Districts. 


Enumerat'x. 


Enrollm'nt. 


Average 

Daily 

Attenb'nce. 


Total Cost. 


Cost pek Pupil, 

based on 

Average Attendance. 


1 


13 


12 


9 


$319 00 


.§35 44 


2 


22 


3 


3 


128 65 


42 66 


3 


85 


37 


25 


469 15' 


18 56 


4 


27 


20 


10 


202 51 


20 25 


5 


12 


8 


7 


266 72 


38 10 


6 ; 


14 


10 


7 


233 25 


33 03 


7 ] 


18 


13 


10 


236 25 


23 62 


Total..? 


191 


103 


71 


$1,855 53 


$26 06 



The same year, the average cost, in the State, in township dis- 
tricts, was only 113.36, including 6 per cent, on permanent pro- 
perty. Argument is not needed to show that such a system as 
this is both ineffective and extravagant. Good schools, as a 
rule, cannot exist under such conditions. The primary trouble 
is, too many schools and too few pujiils in a school; the second- 
ary or consequent trouble, poor teachers, short terms, lack of 
competition and life, and also of ambition on the part of both 
teachers and pupils. Good schools cannot bo looked for where 
an average of 71 pupils is scattered among 7 schools, as in 
Aurora; or where, as in Bainbridge, an enumeration of 104 is 
distributed among 10 districts. Let no one think this state of 
things is infrequent in Ohio. A few summers ago, within sight 
of where I now write, school was kept up an entire term with 
only two pupils in attendance. And these were all there were 
in the district! 

Everybody who visited the Ohio educational exhibit at Phila- 
delphia two years ago, was struck by the admirable series of 
charts in which Prof. Mendenhall presented to the eye the more 
important educational statistics of the State. No one of these 
charts impressed me more than the one showing the size of the 
schools in different sections. The lighter the color the larger 
the schools; the blacker the color the smaller the schools. My 
recollection is, that the deepest black stood for the range, 9 — 14 



62 OUK COMMON SCHOOLS. 

scholars per teacher. Considerable sections of the State were 
thus colored, including much of the extreme northeastern cor- 
ner. In this sense Ashtabula and some of the adjoining coun- 
ties are '^ benighted." 

Centralization is the only remedy for this state of things. There 
must be fewer scliool officers, fewer schools, fewer teachers, and 
more pupils in a school. You cannot have a fire without fuel or 
a school without scholars. The Western Keserve Yankee is very 
conservative. . Having always had a school-house on the corner 
of his own or of the neighboring farm, he cannot reconcile him- 
self to the idea of sending his children three or four miles away. 
But in many places it must come to that; in such towns as those 
mentioned, the children will be taught in consolidated schools, 
or not at all. People will not long be so absurd as to keep up a 
district school for three scholars at an exjjense of 143.66 each. 
When they make up their minds to the inevitable, which is in 
this case also the desirable, they will find that the necessary stejjs 
are both few and short. It will be found both cheaper and bet- 
ter to carry the children to the distant school at public expense, 
than to go on in the old way. 

Many ardent friends of public education are favoring County 
Superintendency as a solution of the country-school problem. 
This is one of our needs, but if gained it will not prove a pana- 
cea. Consolidation is more needed in some localities than the 
superintendency. Something to superintend must come before 
superintendence. 

VI. THE SPIRIT OF OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION. 

Here I shall start with a text. The author of " Certain Dan- 
gerous Tendencies in American Life" {Atlantic Monthly, 
Oct. '78), an article of marked power, thus speaks his mind on 
two phases of the school question: 

" Our school system as it now exists cannot be depended upon to remedy or 
avert the evils which threaten us. Most of the class whose use of prehistoric 
methods of thought leads them to rely upon instinct and intuition, rather than 
upon any results of human experience, have enjoyed the opportunities of our 
schools and have received in an average degree, the benefits which our sys- 
tem of education now confers. The people from whom these dangers arise are 
not stupid or ignorant nor are their minds inactive. They have been through 
our schools; they edit newspapers, make our political speeches in all the country 



SOME XEW CRITICISMS. 63 

places, and represent us in Congress. They are not so much uneducated as 
miseducated ; their faculties are active, particularly of late years, but they are 
undisciplined and misdirected, and the result of their thinking is largely erro- 
neous. For these difficulties our Public Schools furnish no adequate remedy. 
Two things are especially to be noted in our popular school education; it usual- 
ly leads to no interest in literature or acquaintance with it, nor to any sense of 
the value of history for modern man, — a very serious defect; and its most char- 
acteristic and general result is a distaste for manual labor. We have some 
good schools of course, but a great number of teachers and principals of our 
High Schools in country places have for several years explicitly taught their 
pupils, and urged upon parents the sentiment that in this country education 
should raise all who obtain it above the necessity of drudging; that there are 
better ways of making a living than manual labor ' at so much for a day's 
work,' and that these higher ways will be open to all who get an education. 
All this has resulted in a dainty, effeminate, and false view of the world as a 
place where only uneducated and inferior people need vFork hard, or engage in 
toilsome or unattractive employments." 

Here are two distinct charges that I shall consider in an order 
the inverse of the author's. I do not share them in their full 
intensity, but they are largely true. 

First, the most characteristic and general result of the popu- 
lar education is a distaste for manual labor. The ideals held up 
in the Public School are commercial, professional, and political. 
The atmosphere is charged with the desire to become a clerk, a 
lawyer, a politician — anything to avoid work with one's hands. 
It is charged with " the sentiment that in this country education 
should raise all who obtain it above the necessity of drudgery'' 
— " that there are better ways of making a living than manual 
labor." ♦ Here is found one cause why our society is out of pro- 
portion; why the professions, public life, and trade are so over- 
crowded. Girls are infected with this spirit more than boys. 
It is hardly possible to hire an American-born girl of the old 
stock to do housework; it is not thought "genteel." But that 
many of these girls had better do housework for wages than do 
what they are doing, no sensible person is likely to dispute. 

Now the ambition to rise in the scale of employments is an 
honorable one; but the fact is, the great majority of men and 
women have always been manual laborers and always will be. 
Inventions have changed the character of industry amazingly, 
and will continue to do so, but they will never lift the majority 
above that rank. Men will never become so well educated or so 
inventive that they can escape the law, " In the sweat of thy 
face shalt thou eat bread." A man of faith must believe in the 



6i OUR COMMOJNT SCHOOLS. 

bettering of human society. The time may come when tlie day- 
laborers of England shall read Bacon, and so realize Lord 
Brougham's aspiration; but tlie day will never come when the 
mass of men will not work in the lower stories of civilization. 
And any and every system of public instruction, to be really use- 
ful, must recognize this fact. I make no argument against the 
intellectual improvement of the masses; let that improvement 
be made; let the day come, if possible, when the day-laborer shall 
read the Lord Chancellor with as much zest as he now reads a 
"dime-novel,"' or shall follow the demonstrations of Adam 
Smith with as much interest as he now listens to an " advanced 
thinker" haranguing on " soft money;" but do not fill men with 
the idea that the human family can live by its wits. Teach the 
children that work, even drudgery, is necessary and inevitable; 
that every honest and necessary kind of work is honorable to the 
man who does it well; that it is perfectly becoming in one who 
has " got an education " to labor "at so much for a day's work;"' 
that they themselves must work, and that they should learn to 
do it both well and cheerfully. I do not -belong to the practical 
or "utility" school of education, but I do think one of our great 
needs is, to gear our popular education more closely and strongly 
to the needs of daily human life. Society is every day becom- 
ing more complex; the problems of life are daily becoming more 
difficult of solution; and our schools are not giving our children 
the better preparation that they require. We have too much 
vague aspiration, too much sentimentalit}^ and dainty gentility; 
too much nervous nnrest and too little helpful work. 

For the Public School to miss its way here, as it is largely 
doing, is to make an almost fatal mistake. 

But the ^i!/«?jA'c essayist charges a "serious defect " in this: 
The popular education " usually leads to no interest in literature 
or acquaintance with it, nor to any sense of the value of history 
to modern men." Making the usual allowance for rhetoric,, 
this statement is as true as the other. One of the most deadly of 
our mental habits is to undervalue the teachings of experience,, 
to despise the lessons of history, to contemn the life of other 
peoples; and, since we have a new continent and a democratic gov- 
ernment, to hold that human life began anew on these Western 
shores, and that we can safely ask, as a Senator did ask not 



SOME NEW CRITICISMS. 65 

long ago in the Senate. " What is abroad to us?"" Then the stuff 
that " our boys " are reading was pointed out not long ago by 
Prof. Sumner, of Yale, in a way almost to startle the nation. 

It may be said with great truth that the school is not wholly 
to blame for these things. Our higher institutions are filled to 
a great extent with the prevailing spirit; and so are the home, 
the church, the newsijaper, and the lecture-room. The most 
that can be said is, the school shares the spirit of the times. 
What may be called a Gospel of Discontent is a plainly marked 
feature of the 19th century mind, and the Public School is a 
powerful agent in its propagation. 

Then, the Atlantic essayist says, " Popular education is not 
a discipline of the children in thinking; their faculties are active, 
particularly of late years, but they are undisciplined and -mis- 
directed, and the result of their thinking is largely erroneous," 
This is especially true of thinking on social and political sub- 
jects. Our popular education appears to oppose no effectual 
barrier to the crazy social theories and insane financial schemes 
now so current. The inflation madness rages in New England 
as well as the new States of the West. How far these crazy 
theories are due to the prevalent half and quarter education, I 
do not carefully inquire; certain it is that the Common School 
does not protect such old and conservative communities as 
Maine and Massachusetts against the prevalent lunacies. There 
is even some reason to think that our popular education casts 
up a highway for these thijigs.to travel over. Partly educated 
men, bred up in the idea that one man is as good as another, 
are apt to be impatient of the leadership of men more compe- 
tent to lead than they are themselves, and therefore fall to 
work to evolve theories for themselves. True it is that our 
education is breaking down, where, according to our theory, it 
should be strongest. We have defended it all along on the 
ground that it is a political necessity, needed to qualify the 
citizen for the duties of citizenship. "The State may educate 
in her own defense," is the old American doctrine; but the fact 
is, those studies that closely relate to the duties of citizenship 
are those that the Public Schools teach least and poorest — the 
Science of Politics, the nature of our Governments, State and 
National, Political Economy, and what is best and most inspiring 



66 ouE coMMoisr schools.' 

in American history. The school fills the boy Avith the political 
sjiirit, but gives him no adequate training for the simplest politi- 
cal duties. Not only do we need in some way to gear the Com- 
mon School more closely to the daily life of the people, but we 
also need to gear it more closely to public life. I close this 
branch of the discussion with the following passage from one of 
our abler journals {The Nation, No. 690): 

"A good deal can be done to restore the old spirit of common sense and self- 
reliance by better teaching in the Public Schools on the simpler points of 
public economy. It is surely a reproach to our system of education that any 
body of men knowing enough to draw a platform should be willing to declare, 
like the Massachusetts Nationals the other day, that the use of gold and silver 
as a standard of value was ' idiotic,' and call for the substitution of printed 
pieces of paper as something more stable. The more complicated and disputed 
economical problems it would be inexpedient or useless to make the children 
solve ; but against all those errors which arise from not thinking things out, 
every boy and girl ought to leave school thoroughly protected. The relations 
of labor and capital, and the function of money, are among the things about 
which people fall into delusions, in a large number of cases, simply because 
they have never worked over their phenomena with the aid of a friendly critic 
or objector, such as a teacher would be. Two-thirds of the visionaries who 
produced their plans before the Hewitt Committee were evidently suffering 
simply from the want of talk with some rational i^erson, as was showTi by the 
confusion which overtook them when Mr. Hewitt began to raise objections. 
Every boy ought to be familiar at school with the obstacles in the way of every 
plan of social regeneration produced by the Grreenbackers and Labor Reform- 
ers within the past ten years, because the plans are all old or well known. 
Take the case of the exemption of the United States bonds from taxation. 
This is a strong point now with all the Greenback demagogues, and makes an 
impression on their audiences which seems to indicate the absence of the most 
elementary knowledge about the nature of contracts, the conditions of public 
credit, and about the provisions of the United States Constitution with regard 
to taxation. But every boy and gii'l of twelve in the Common Schools ought 
to know all about the mode and terms on which a Government loan is made. 
So, also, the success of the ' fiat-money ' idea is due to total ignorance of the 
history of paper-money experiments, short and simple as it is, and also of the 
three reasons why mankind have clung to gold and silver as measures of value. 
The fault of most of the elementary books on Political Economy is that they 
attempt to cover too much ground, and a good deal of it disputed ground, 
which has no immediate bearing on politics. What is needed for the purposes 
of political safety is very clear and thorough drilling in early years about two 
or three things — the source of wages, the source of capital, and the relations 
of the Government to money. It will be a great pity if the present crisis 
passes away without originating some reform in this direction, and if this 
reform be prevented by any notion that the delusions now raging are going to 
disappear from our politics very soon, or ever disappear completely."' 



SOME NEW CRITICISMS. 67 

\'II. CONCLUSION. 

"Each age," says Mr. Mackenzie Wallace (''Kussia," p. 393), 
"has its peciiliar social and political panaceas." "■ One genera- 
tion," he goes on to say, "puts its trust in religion, another in 
philanthropy, a third in written constitutions, a fourth in uni- 
versal suffrage, a fifth in popular education." These observa- 
tions are both striking and just. We Americans are now 
putting our trust in the Public School; that is, we are looking 
to it to solve our problems and cure our ills. Perhaps there 
is no one agent that avc can look to with more confidence, but 
we are certainly exaggerating it as an element in civilization. 
Not even the school-house is a social panacea. The fact is, we 
have been having a sort of craze on the subject. The causes 
are — first, the Northern man's traditional faith in education; 
and, second, the Southern Rebellion. Ojir public teachers 
began telling us, on the outbreak of the war, " This is the work 
of popular ignorance, and would have been prevented by the 
school-house," Certainly, popular ignorance played a part in 
secession, but, not as important as we have been taught. 
However, the American mind — convinced that education would 
prevent secessions and other dreadful things — fell to "educat- 
ing." The spelling-book and the reader were to be the saviors 
of society. True to its materialistic ideals and standards of 
measure, it began to measure education by the million-dol- 
lars' worth. Education was to be measured l)y its cost. 
The more money was put into sites, buildings, apparatus, 
salaries, etc., the safer society would be. Public instruction 
was now rapidly extended in every direction. That the exten- 
sion was largely indiscriminate in Ohio, is shown by the fig- 
ures. The doubling of the expenditure from 1855 to 1866, 
inclusive, means a healthy growth; the doubling from '66 
to '69, or from '67 to '76, means one that is spasmodic and 
and abnormal. Probably it is too soon to inquire how we are 
succeeding in saving society by the school-house. We have not 
had a new rebellion since we entered on the new era; but it is a 
little curious that, side by side with the current faith in the 
Common School — side by side with the enormous extension of 
popular education, at least in point of parade and cost — there 



68 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

has been a series of social schemes, one following the otlier, 
wholly unprecedented in our history. Never before have we 
had such an army of desperate political schemers and social 
agitators! Never before have such men gained such influence 
over the public mind! I am far from saying that there is any 
causal relation here. I say the coincidence is curious, and 
suggests a doubt whether the common school-master is the 
potent factor in our life that we have supposed. Possibly it will 
be found in the end that President Elliot, of Harvard, hit an 
important truth when he said, some time ago: 

"Many persons hold that the Republic can be saved by primary education; 
but the most despotic Government in the world— that of Germany— is that 
where primary education is most widespread. Despots can reconcile them- 
selves to universal primary education, but cannot overcome the influence of 
universal education of a higher type. Well conducted, superior education, 
the training in knowledge, in writing, and speaking of the natural leaders of 
the people, is the need of the country." 

Here I rest. The last 15 years has seen a vast extension of 
the Public School work, made with indiscriminating haste. 
The time for thorough discussion and vigorous criticism has 
come. What have we gained — what lost? Where have we gone 
right — where wrong? It will be found that a good deal of tlie 
work must be done over again. To educate a nation is a great 
undertaking, and even a measurably perfect system to accom- 
plish it we shall not soon see. The more thorough the discus- 
sion of the existing system, however, the sooner will the better 
system come. 



APPENDIX. 



PROF. CHURCH ON THE WEST POINT STATISTICS. 

West Point, N. Y., May 10, 1877 
B. A. Hinsdale, A. M. : 

Deft?" 6^j>v— Your letter of the lOtli ult. , with uewpaper slip and pam- 
phlet, came duly to hand, and were read with interest. I am not sur- 
prised that your paper should excite attention. A candid discu,ssion of 
so important a matter, conducted with a simple desire to elicit the truth 
and discover proper remedies for any defects which may appear, is much 
to be desired. I hope it may not cease until it is proved that the Schools, 
public and private, in the State of Ohio and elsewhere, are made perfect, 
both in their system of instruction and in its application. 

I do not see that I can say much in regard to the matter without repe- 
tition of what I have already written to you. That I may be thoro ughly 
understood, I would repeat that the opinion so deliberately expressed by 
me was founded on my own obmrvation and careful experience during a 
longer term, as an active examiner in the branches referred to, than 
often falls to the lot of any individual. For more than forty years I have 
personally examined annually an average of about 110 young men in the 
portions of Arithmetic required for admission here, and have been as 
active in the examination of all other branches as any other member of 
the Academic Board. 

The opinion was not formed suddenly, but from its first conception 
has grown from year to year with added experience, both with candidates 
for admission and cadets in the class-room, in daily recitations upon those 
higher branches so intimately dependent upon these elements. It was in 
no sense founded on the statistics so much commented upon by Mr. 
Rickoff, as it had become with me a fixed fact, and had been adopted by 
the older members of the Board, before such statistics had assumed any 
definite shape, and was expressed to the Boax'd of Visitors of 1873 with- 
out reference to, or even thought of, the particulars of these statistics. 

The latter are valuable as showing the fact — painful enough — that so 
many young men fail in due qualification in simple, elementary branches 



70 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

of education ; but are of little account in showing the relatve qualifications 
from year to year. They are necessarily fluctuating. They could not other- 
wise be true; as every active teacher knows that classes, as individuals, 
differ much in talent as well as acquirement. We often have a class of 
one year of superior capacity, followed by another below mediocrity — 
one class with many of decided capacity, and the remainder dull, fol- 
lowed by one with few brilliant scholars, but with remarkable uniformity 
as a whole, and much superior as a class. These are facts which must be 
derived mainly from observation — not statistics of numbers. Why these 
differences exist I have never been able to tell, any more than we can tell 
why one individual is endowed with more talent than another. 

Truly, there is no evidence in my expressed opinion, or in my letter to 
you, " That the Schools spoken of are Public Schools." They are "the 
Schools of our country for education in the elementary branches, particu- 
larly in arithmetic, reading and spelling." If these young men have not 
received their elementary education in these branches at the Public 
Schools, then, of course, these Public Schools are not subject to the 
inference which I draw. But, in truth, as far as my knowledge goes, 
many of these candidates have received all of their elementary education 
in what we call the Common Schools ; some in Private Schools, others 
in Academies and High Schools. 

It may be remarked, in this connection, that two or three High 
Schools, well known, have an enviable reputation with us in this respect, 
particularly the one at which Mr. Rickoff and Professor Michie seem to 
have received their early education — seldom sending us a candidate who 
fails, and often sending those of a very decided capacity and acquire 
ment." Following the same course of reasoning as that used in drawing 
my inference in the opinion expressed by me, I should say that both 
system of instruction in these brandies and its application in these 
schools is excellent. A similar remark may be made with regard to one or 
two Congressional Districts, which seldom send us a poor or poorly pre- 
pared candidate, while the vacancies in others are seldom filled — candi- 
date after candidate presenting himself for failure. He would be a poor 
logician who did not infer merit of some kind in one, and defect in the 
other. But these are rare exceptions idMcIi have always existed, and do not 
affect the general principle as applied to the mass. 

Mr. Rickoff makes one point to which I was some time ago disposed 
to give greater weight than after reflection showed it was entitled to. I 
refer to the political favoritism which for the last twenty or thirty years 
has prevailed in the appointment of cadets. No one will deny that, if 
greater pains should be taken by all in the selection of the appointees, a 
better class of young men, and better prepared, should result; but, as 
remarked iu my letter to you, I have been unable to see that these political 
selections were, as a class, any the less talented than before, or that the 
appointments have been given in any greater degree to the ignorant and 
stupid. On the contrary, there is annually given strong evidence that, as 



SOME NEW CRITICISMS. 71 

a whole, these appoiutees of the last twenty years liave spent more time 
at school, or, at least, have studied more subjects in their preparation, 
than those of former daj's. If the examination papers of twenty-five or 
thirty years ago could be found, seldom would one appear wherein the 
candidate represented himself as having studied more than the elementary 
Ijranches now required for admission, and Latin (often not more than the 
elementary branches then required); whereas now it is quite remarkable 
if he does not report himself as having studied, not only the branches 
required, but two or three languages, algebra, geometry, chemistry, etc. — 
nearly all the branches of a collegiate course. A superficial observer 
would naturally say that, of course, those of the present day are much 
better prepared -they have studied many more branches, have had supe- 
rior school advantages, more learned and accomplished teachers — but alas! 
the careful examiner will soon find that, with all this array of names, and 
all these well-paid-for advantages, many a student is gi-ossly ignorant of 
the very elements upon which they depend. 

And here, my dear sir, I think we come to the great defect. The pupil 
has been hurried over the very elements of education, into the (to him) 
mists and clouds of high science. In the "pauper schools" of former 
days there were no ladders to these exalted regions, and the ambitious 
"pauper pupil" (in those days, as now there were many talented and 
successful) was compelled to work on these simple elements until he knew 
(hem. From my conversations with others deeply interested in this 
matter — teachers as well as pupils — I find that I am not alone in this 
opinion. I may be wrong; and if so, trust the continued discussion will 
develop the true cause of the annual failure of so large a percentage of 
our candidates for admission here. 

I was somewhat surprised to learn, from your letter, that Mr. Rickoft" 
had "read a communication from Professor Michie, of the Academy, in 
whicli that gentleman expressed opinions quite the opposite of your 
own." The synopsis does not state this so strongly. Upon inquiry of 
Professor M., he tells me that, in a communication to Mr. Rickoff, in 
reply to several questions of routine, he had answered one— the only one 
in any way bearing upon my opinion regarding the preparation and success 
of candidates from the High School before referred to — in very much the 
same terms as I have used in regard to this school in the former part of this 
letter giving to him the facts as we had often talked of them; that, 
though he had kept no copy of his communication, he was certain he had 
expressed in substance nothing further. I then read to him the rough 
draft of my letter to you— which I had corrected so as to agree with the 
letter sent — and he assured me, as I was confident before was the fact, 
that he fully agreed with me in every point ; that, although his experience 
as Professor at the Academy is only a short one, of seven years, and 
from his own observation he could not bear as strong testimony as myself, 
yet, from knowledge derived from other sources, he had no doubt on the 
subject. 



72 OUR COMMON SCHOOLS. 

I trust you will again excuse my delay in this repl.v, as my time has 
been much occupied since its receipt. 

I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant. 

A. E. CHURCH. 

It is proper to say, that Prof. Church, wlien he wrote the above 
letter, had before him only a newspaper synopsis of Mr. Rick- 
oif' s paper. The pamphlet mentioned is " Our Common School 
Education.*' Mr. Rickoff's "Reply" had not appeared in May, 

1877. 



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